


Just Look At This Outfit, They’ll Let Me Into The Choir For Sure

by Rhonda



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game), Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Celestial Larvae, Disguise, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Female Pronouns for Grell Sutcliff, Human Experimentation, Infiltration, Kidnapping, Medical, Minor Character Death, Murder, Pre-Canon, Subterfuge, Suggestive Themes, Trans Character, Trans Female Character, Unrequited Crush, bloodborne au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:28:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 25,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25586710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhonda/pseuds/Rhonda
Summary: Grelle, a Powder Keg, has a crush on a Church Hunter named William. He doesn't know she exists, but she plans to use that to her advantage to infiltrate the Choir and endear herself to him best she can.All whilst keeping her Blood Minister Angelina supplied with the blood of young women to aid in her experimentation.
Relationships: Angelina Dalles| Madame Red & Grell Sutcliff, William T. Spears/Grell Sutcliff
Comments: 3
Kudos: 21





	1. New Ideas, Of The Higher Plane

“I don’t know why you don’t just try talking to him.”

“I did! Last Night of the Hunt! I walked up to him to introduce myself right outside Oedon Chapel! He attacked me!”

“Did you shoot at him, Grelle?”

“No,” Grelle said indignantly. Angelina just gave her a knowing look and Grelle cracked. “Okay! Maybe I shot at him a little, but only after he attacked me! He must have mistaken me for a Vileblood, the blind twit.”

“It’s the red hair, I’m sure,” she said, turning to adjust her ministration. Grelle was laying on an operating table in the back of Angelina’s clinic receiving her weekly lifesaving treatment. She had traveled to Yharnam after hearing of their miracle blood with the hope that she might find a cure for her terminal maleness. It had taken some doing but she eventually managed to find a Blood Minister willing to offer her an experimental feminizing treatment. So far the results had been spectacular. The caveat was that she had to sign a contract binding her to a life as a Hunter. Along with the way she also had to personally gather some of the more peculiar reagents for her blood ministration. “Either that or the loud rattling noise coming off of your trick weapon spooked him,” she added.

“Don’t you dare say anything about my lovely saw!” Grelle warned, not that she had much she could do, prone and hooked up to an IV as she was. Her saw was a custom number she had made when she had fallen in with the Powder Kegs. She loved the design philosophy behind the whirligig but figured she could do one better by arranging the teeth along a chain powered by a motor. She loved her trick weapon more than anything else in the world and would defend its honor against anyone.

“It’s a lovely weapon, Grelle, don’t worry,” Angelina said, putting her hand on Grelle’s shoulder to keep her from rising. Grelle just huffed before falling back into a daydream of her handsome mysterious attacker.

“I just need some way to get him to notice me! Or rather, notice me, but not because of my trick weapon and gun.” Grelle had been crushing hard on a high ranking Church Hunter named William for several Hunts now and she was quickly running out of ideas for how to get his attention. He was so cold and aloof and the effortless way he used his telescoping trick weapon when she watched him fight from the rooftops made her swoon. She wanted to warm that cold exterior, melt that icy heart, and not just with quicksilver and gunpowder like she did with most men she saw. “A Powder Keg and a member of the Healing Church. Two Hunters from two different worlds, doesn’t it sound so romantic? It’s positively fate! If only I had some way to get in with the higher ranking Church Hunters.”

“I don’t know, those higher ups in the Healing Church are famously reclusive, even if you did get in on the ground floor. Maybe if you just had some way to get close without him attacking you, like a disguise or something, and then once you were closer you could reveal yourself. I’m sure if he grew to love you he wouldn’t mind.”

Grelle hummed at that. She’d need to mull it over but it seemed like a plausible idea. Angelina was a very smart woman. The brains to her, well, her lack of brains. She felt like they made a good duo. They chit-chatted for the next hour or so, and occasionally Angelina needed leave to tend to other patients in her clinic, but for the most part her nurses were able to function independently. Eventually her treatment was done and she took out Grelle’s IV and helped her up off the infusion table.

“Same time next week, yeah?” Grelle said, walking out of their private back room towards the main areas of the clinic. She stopped and turned around when she noticed Angelina wasn’t following her.

“I’m starting to run low on the, um, _special_ blood for your treatments,” she whispered. “I was wondering if you might... _procure_ me some more. Soon.”

“Already?” Grelle asked, exhausted. “Didn’t I just get you five quarts only a few months ago?”

“Yes, but I’m getting close to a breakthrough. I know it! Besides Grelle, please, this one really deserves it, this is the fifth time this year she’s procured my services. Here’s her address.”

Grelle took the small slip of paper that she was holding out and pocketed it. She knew that Angelina was barren and had confided in her that her research had originally been with the goal of treating her own condition. The success of Grelle’s treatment gave her hope that she might be on the right track. She so desperately wanted a child and Grelle empathized deeply with her plight, so she found herself fulfilling their grim shopping list every time the moon hung low.

“Next Night of the Hunt, then.”

“Next Night of the Hunt,” Angelina confirmed as Grelle stepped out into the clinic proper and then into the busy streets of Central Yharnam.

* * *

Nights of the Hunt were liminal spaces where place and time distorted for Hunters. Realities converged before them in ways that Grelle quite honestly didn’t have the insight to process. Occasionally this would mean that Hunts might only last a few hours, but more often than not it might mean the Night would feel as though it stretched on and on for days, weeks even. 

Hoping that this might be one of the rare former examples Grelle found herself deep in the bowels of Yarnham’s lower districts. The streets were empty. Hunters rarely came down here and even though it had its share of beasts they were far less prominent than in the more wealthy districts. All the doors were shut tight and most of the windows were dark with curtains drawn. The low rumble of her saw echoed down the streets, in her off hand she nervously flipped her pistol end over end. Her peers had developed guns with far greater stopping power but more than anything she loathed the idea of having attention drawn away from her beautiful trick weapon.

She turned the corner to the street of her quarry’s address and was surprised to see movement towards the far end. There was a woman, a Hunter by the look of her, in queer-looking heavy white robes with a black tricorn hat hefting a bound and gagged woman over her shoulders. They locked eyes, or Grelle assumed they did as she couldn’t see her eyes for the blindfold covering them, and as quick as she had entered Grelle’s life she vanished down a side alley.

Grelle didn’t know what to make of that until she got to the address written on the slip of paper given to her by Angelina and found its door kicked open. The inside was empty and ravaged. Even Grelle could put two and two together to realize the woman she was after had been taken before she could get here.

Killstealer. Worse, she didn’t even kill her prey but kidnapped her to do… something with. Clearly she was a member of the Church but not of a branch that she had encountered in her time in Yharnam thus far. She tried to pursue her but she was too late and couldn’t find any trace of the Church Hunter. 

This really sucked. If she couldn’t get Angelina the blood she needed she wouldn’t be able to get her treatments and then she would die! Not to mention how much she had grown to root for the woman’s attempts at restoring her own fertility. No, she had to track down this woman but she hadn’t the faintest clue where to start. 

* * *

Othello was who she went to whenever she needed answers. It was very unusual for a member of the School of Mensis to interact with a Hunter on any friendly terms, but then again both of them were outcasts in their own right. Grelle was, well, Grelle. Too flamboyant and bombastic for most Hunters of the Workshop, too principled for the Vilebloods of Cainhurst. Even in the presence of other Powder Kegs she often felt out of place, being the only woman amongst their ranks. Othello on the other hand had been drawn to the school for its research opportunities but often balked when it came to the extreme measures his peers took. His appeals to their sense of humanity hadn’t made him many friends and as far as Grelle knew they only kept him around because of his talents as a scholar.

She found him sitting on a rooftop overlooking the Unseen Village. He dangled his feet over the edge watching the city lock down for the Hunt and gave her an easy smile when she approached him. He was far too normal and level headed for a member of the School. He struck Grelle as being a typical bookish geek, with an unassuming disposition and love of children’s candies. A far cry from the fanatical raving lunatics the School of Mensis typically produced.

“I can’t take you seriously with that thing on,” Grelle said referring to the tall hexagonal cage he wore over his head. It was a new addition to his scholarly attire. A sign that his initiation into the School had been completed and he now ranked amongst some of their most advanced researchers. 

“You don’t need to,” he replied. “I should hope that you never take anything that comes from any of our research seriously. This realm, this universe, is absurd, one of the first steps to true knowledge is accepting that.”

Grelle didn’t know what that meant exactly, ever since he put that lightning rod over his head he began talking more and more like the rest of them. This city was full of secrets and rabbit holes that Grelle was more than happy to leave unexplored. It didn’t matter to her why the beasts appeared or why the moon hung so large and low in the sky so long as her skin would grow soft and some fat would redistribute to her hips.

“Besides, I uhh… I can't take it off,” he added. He really was a cutie, even with the cage. She wanted to plop down next to him and gossip for a while but her sense of urgency in finding where the woman had taken her girlifying blood took precedence.

“Do you know anything about members of the Church who wear big white robes and blindfolds?” she asked, getting straight to the point.

“You mean the Choir?” he said looking off into the middle distance as though he was watching something large move around through the city that wasn’t there. “They’re the highest echelons of the Church and one of two stems to grow out of the original research into the Pthumarians produced by the College of Byrgenwerth. The other stem being The School of Mensis. I suppose they’re our mortal enemies, but I think we’re really more just two sides of the same coin,” he said. Grelle didn’t need the history lesson but knowing that they were researchers made her more worried about the possibility of recovering the woman’s blood. “Why do you want to know?”

“I saw one kidnapping a woman whose blood Angelina needed for my ministrations.”

“You’re still seeing that civilian doctor? Come see me in my laboratory sometime, we’ll find a way to get you fixed up right and proper,” he said with a smirk. Grelle just scoffed before he continued. “Ah, so they’re kidnapping people now too huh? I suppose it only makes sense, we started to do so as well a long time ago for the sake of experimentation. Don’t tell anyone I told you that. On that topic, if you see any Hunters about with iron helmets tonight do be sure to steer clear. I don’t want either of us getting in trouble.”

“Okay, but do you have any idea where they might have taken her?”

  
“Not a clue as to where they might keep their prisoners but the Choir’s headquarters are in the Orphanage in the Upper Cathedral Ward. Fastest way there is through the Church Workshop in Oedon Chapel.”

Grelle didn’t wait to say goodbye and she was sure Othello wasn’t expecting it either. He just hummed melodically as she took off towards the Cathedral Ward. 

* * *

The Cathedral Ward was tricky to navigate, not only for the deathly palored chapel giants but for the bustle of Church Hunters going about their grim work. The last thing Grelle wanted was to cause a kerfuffle. She ran rooftop to rooftop ducking behind chimneys to avoid patrolling Church servants.

She made her way to Oedon Chapel suddenly remembering that it was where she had last encountered William. She hoped she didn’t run into him tonight, she didn’t have any kind of disguise or plan to keep him from attacking her on sight just yet. 

Luckily for her the Church’s Workshop was mostly cleared out for the night and those few Church Hunters still tinkering with their trick weapons this late into the Hunt were too focused on their work to notice her slip past.

She sat outside the gates to the Orphanage, hiding behind a few creepy statues of weeping women. Even having been in Yharnam for almost a year she still wasn’t used to their unsettling eldritch aesthetic. It didn’t vibe with her in the slightest. The gates to the Orphanage were locked and even though she saw movement inside she didn’t have the faintest idea of how to get in.

She had been there for what felt like hours trying to figure out a way in when she noticed a man coming up the stairs from the bridge. He was dressed differently than how she remembered him, but the outfit itself wasn’t entirely unfamiliar. The white robes had hidden the shape of his body somewhat and the blindfold covered half of his face but his unique telescoping trick weapon gave him away to her immediately.

It was her crush, William. She realized he wasn’t just any Church Hunter, he was a member of the Choir.


	2. A Hunter Is A Hunter, Even In A Dream

Gosh, but wasn’t he beautiful. Even with half his face covered she couldn’t help but admire his narrow angular jawline and pouty lips. She wondered how those lips might feel pressed against her own or what it might be like to trace her fingers along that jaw. She wondered if he ever wasn’t scowling. Just the way he walked was beautiful. It wasn’t graceful exactly, but it was smooth and with purpose. He was a man on a mission. A man who knew exactly where he was going and what he was doing. Even if most of his form was obscured by heavy flowing robes she could still see his thin and tall frame clearly implied by his precise movements. 

Besides, it was kind of a sweet outfit on its own. Grelle looked down at her black Hunter’s garb. She’d accessorized with a little red and white striped bowtie but for the most part, as drab as she felt, she really couldn’t be bothered to spend time in the workshop sewing together clothes. All her talents were in weaponcrafting, much to the disappointment of her fashion dreams. The Choir garb looked to come standard with a bowtie and she was jealous of how cute it was.

He got up to the gate and exchanged a few words with someone behind it before heading off to the side of the Orphanage. Grelle subconsciously started following him, thankfully still having the good sense to keep a safe distance. She didn’t even think to try one of the side doors, and she felt like an idiot for not considering that one might exist. He climbed up some stairs and through a small door into the building. She tip-toed up the stairs until she heard the unmistakable sound of a lock being engaged from the other side. There went her one plan.

Then again, now she knew to look for other ways in that might not be immediately obvious. For example, nearby there were some stairs that went down instead of up. Grelle’s deadly-efficient Hunter abilities of pattern recognition lead her to deduce that perhaps those went somewhere.

She followed them down into a door that was not only unlocked but left ajar. It led into a dark lifeless basement, full of various storage boxes and arcane doodads that were not in use. Most of the Choir must be out hunting, else spending their time in the upper levels of the Orphanage. She wondered what they got up to up there, she bet they had fun even if they were a bunch of nerds.

Grelle could barely see but she didn’t dare light a torch for fear of drawing the attention of anyone or anything that might be lurking down here. As she walked through the aisles of crates she found little workstations that looked more recently used. They were covered in loose papers and books, upon them were what she thought might be star charts and some complex looking geometrical drawings. She also found some alchemy stations that still had liquid in them, although she wasn’t quite sure what it was that they were full of. It certainly wasn’t blood.

Eventually she came across a small cage by a table stacked with documents and scientific equipment. It was far too small to fit a human comfortably, but still a human woman was what it held. She looked familiar and Grelle was almost certain she had randomly stumbled her way into rediscovering her kidnapped target. The woman in the cage didn’t look up at her approach, instead she just knelt there, seemingly oblivious to the world around her.

Grelle heard a small squeak from behind her and she turned around just in time to avoid a heavy metal sphere that would have caved in her skull. The woman wielding it had moved entirely silently and even now didn’t make any noise, neither from her footfalls nor from any grunts of exertion. Grelle saw the small shape where the squeak had come from squirming along the ground to disappear behind a nearby crate. It was too big to be a rat and her first instinct when she recalled its silhouette was that it was a large baby, but that didn’t make any sense. Even though she was curious, she had far more pressing matters to attend to.

It was a member of the Choir, probably the same woman she saw earlier that night. Her only defining feature that wasn’t hidden underneath the Choir garb was a pair of thin black braids hanging down behind either shoulder, something Grelle recognized from that alleyway in lower Yharnam. In one hand she held a metal stick with an oversized smooth metal orb on the end, in the other she held a nasty looking ornate rifle, a staple of elite Church Hunters. Grelle had dashed away from the blow she attempted to ambush her with and now they paced around in a circle across from each other waiting for the other to act.

“I’ll have you know it’s a little uncouth to try and take a lady from behind like that!” she called out. The woman didn’t respond, or even indicate that she had heard her in any way. Ugh, taunting an opponent who didn’t squirm at her words or respond in kind was the worst. She felt like a comedian performing to a dead crowd.

She revved up her saw and the woman one-upped her by flicking her peculiar smooth morningstar to the side causing lightning to spark all across its surface. Flashy and terrifying, Grelle was jealous. The light off of the electricity brought the room into short glimpses of visibility, and Grelle used it to make a mental map of her surroundings, spotting a few solid looking boxes to hide behind should things turn sour. They walked in a slow standoff like that for a while, neither willing to take the first move and show their hand too early. 

The woman decided she would act first. The Church rifle was bulky and slow, too slow, and when she fired it at her Grelle didn’t have too much trouble rolling out of the way of its hail of pellets. She used the motion of her roll to get in close and swipe up at her with her saw. The woman managed to backstep out of the way before countering with a blow of her own. Grelle swung up to block it with her saw and two kinds of sparks flew. Both the little bright burning hot iron shavings flying from the whirring blade of her saw and small lightning bolts which ran across the smooth iron orb into Grelle’s trick weapon and then up her arms causing her a great deal of pain.

She tried to hold the clash for a moment but the searing pain overtook her and she had to concede ground. It hurt something awful and she could feel the muscles in her arm twitching involuntarily. Consumed by pain she didn’t have the wherewithal to fully dodge the second blast from the woman’s rifle and she took a few pellets into her chest and shoulder. She didn’t even smile, she just reignited the sparks coming off of her weapon and came after her.

“Okay, you managed to penetrate me a few times I’ll give you that!” Grelle said, as she enacted a tactical retreat. She ducked behind a few crates and fumbled to inject herself with a blood vial to try and staunch the bleeding coming from the holes in her upper torso. It didn’t seem like the woman was pursuing her and at first she thought that was a very good thing. It gave her time to get the blood vial into her thigh but she quickly heard some strange noises coming from behind the boxes and suddenly the room was lit up as though a second moon had formed in the Orphanage’s basement. She looked up and saw the stars of the night sky above her. Only they weren't stars but rather a swarm of glowing missiles that followed after her even as she tried to run away.

She managed to avoid most of them but three or four missiles raked across her back and sent her sprawling to the floor. She rolled around in agony before looking up to see the woman striding over to her. Grelle tried to pick herself up. Her footfalls were quiet as ever as she approached Grelle to finish her off. She didn’t say anything, didn’t smirk, didn’t express any anger or pride, she simply raised her morningstar above her head. Right as she swung the killing blow Grelle swiftly pointed her gun into her chest and popped a quicksilver bullet into her.

It wasn’t enough to kill her, barely a love tap in her book, but the impact certainly knocked the wind out of the woman. She silently sputtered and stood dazed for a half second. It was a half second too long.

“That’s why I use the pistol, darling,” she said as she plunged the tip of her whirring saw blade into the woman’s stomach. To her credit she didn’t scream or cry or even make any noise at all as she died. The only thing on her face that changed was her neutral expression shifted into a delicate little “oh.”

Grelle shook the body off of her saw and powered it down. She didn’t hear anyone coming to investigate the sound of their fight. Grelle assumed that this woman’s silence wasn’t the norm for the Choir. William seemed to pride himself on how neatly his shoes clicked on the cobble when Grelle would watch him from afar. Besides, they were under several tons of stone brick, Yharnamn’s grotesque architecture actually coming in useful to Grelle for once.

She searched the woman’s body and found a keyring along with a strange looking hunter’s badge. She fumbled with her keys until she found the one that went to her target’s cage. When Grelle opened the small door the woman inside finally looked up at her.

“Are you here to save me?” She asked, voice flat, lacking hope. Typical Yharnamite.

“Not this time hon, sorry,” Grelle said, knocking her over the head with the butt of her pistol and heaving her unconscious body over her shoulder. She figured it would be easier to extract the blood elsewhere. She had only just barely survived that fight and another one like that would kill her most definitely.

As she turned to leave she looked at the Choir woman’s body on the ground. It seemed like a waste to let all that blood just soak into the floorboards. 

* * *

Grelle knocked on the door to Angelina’s clinic and a voice called out from the other side almost immediately.

“Grelle? Grelle, is that you?”

“Who else loves you enough to brave the Night of the Hunt in order to bring you such striking specimens?”

“You brought her _here?”_

“You didn’t answer my question, Angelina,” Grelle sang. The woman on the other side of the door sighed and started working at some of the locks.

“No one but you, Grelle. No one but you,” she said, begrudgingly amused. Grelle tittered at that. “You didn’t answer _my_ question, you brought the woman here rather than merely bring me her blood?”

“Well, I didn’t really have the time to dilly dally, just open up and I’ll explain everything. My arms are getting tired,” Grelle said. Angelina grunted at that before flipping the last bolt on her door.

“Oh wow, you look like shit,” she said looking Grelle up and down. Grelle did probably look a lot worse for wear after her fight with the Choir woman, she certainly felt that way. Her eyes fell onto the bodies Grelle was carrying. “Ah! You really did bring me two, then? Excellent!”

“Well, some of us can’t spend all Night sitting pretty in our little red coats, Angie. Some of us have to get shot to earn a living,” Grelle said, stepping inside through the threshold into the clinic and Angelina closed and locked the door behind her. The main area of the clinic was dark, the only light coming from a small lantern Angelina carried, along with the reflected haze of light drifting down the hallway from Angelina’s personal laboratory. Angelina turned from the door and saw Grelle’s back, quickly sucking in air.

“Oh! You’re hurt, Grelle! Come along, let me get you a transfusion,” she said, voice full of worry, before muttering: “Now just what kind of weapon could even cause an injury like this?”

“I’m really not quite sure, it _did_ hit me in the back, after all. I don’t have eyes lining my head, you know!” It wasn’t a lie, she really had no idea what kind of strange magic that woman had cast. She tried her best to not think about things that didn’t make any sense, but it felt like more things didn’t make sense every day. Grelle followed Angelina into her lab setting the women down where she bid her to.

Angelina gingerly took Grelle’s coat and sat her down on an operating table. She asked Grelle to take off her shirt so she could get a better look at her wounds and Grelle sheepishly obliged, more than a little sensitive about her chest. She had a small lacy bra on beneath her heavy Hunter’s garb and even though it had no cups she still struggled to fill it out. She reflexively covered herself with her arms. Angelina gave her a soft smile and tenderly pried her arms away just enough so that she could see the bloody holes on Grelle’s shoulder, chest, and back. She tsked, but ultimately decided it was nothing that a good infusion couldn’t solve, hooking her up to an IV.

Grelle told her about her adventure tracking down the woman while Angelina prepared to to extract the blood she needed for her research. The woman wasn’t dead, merely still unconscious, but Angelina corrected that swiftly. Something about it made Grelle wince. Grelle had murdered before on her behalf, but the way Angelina did it was so clinical, the same way that she cut a piece of fabric for a bandage.

She wondered if she should feel bad. Instead, she just felt a little sick. She wondered if she really was so different from the Vilebloods. Angelina’s coat even looked like the ones those old Cainhurst “knights” wore. They chatted for a bit but as Angelina became more absorbed in her work she stopped saying much other than short one word responses to the things Grelle said. She took that as her cue to leave. She took out her IV, wounds now mostly closed up, and jumped off the table. As she buttoned up her coat she looked at the white Choir robes neatly folded on a surgical cart in the corner of the room. She had bled the Choir woman’s corpse as well and discarded her clothes for better access to her veins, so now the robes had no owner.

Suddenly Grelle got a bolt of inspiration.

“You’re not using these Choir robes for anything, are you?” she asked Angelina. She didn’t even turn around when she replied.

“No, they’re all yours if you want them,” she said, waving her hand dismissively. Grelle picked them up eagerly and almost ran out of the room and the Clinic with a newfound excitement.

* * *

Back in the Workshop in the Hunter’s Dream, Grelle got to work sewing up the hole in the robes her saw had made. The blood came out easily in a wash bin, and then it just became an issue of adjusting the seam so it fit her better. The woman had been significantly bustier than her, for one, and the robes were obviously too big in the front. Grelle just powered through the dysmorphia and sewed as best she could. She was pretty terrible at sewing and all her lines looked messy and uneven. She was certain she ended up spending way longer trying to fix the garment than she had any right to.

She wasn’t alone in the Workshop tonight, fellow Powder Keg Ronald’s bizarre trick weapon seemed to require constant maintenance, and it looked like he’d already been here for a couple hours. He was new to the Powder Kegs along with being a Hunter in general and his engineering skills still had a ways to go. She liked to think she served as a kind of mentor to the young man, and she floated a few suggestions his way when he couldn’t quite get his blades to stop spinning. He thanked her bashfully once he got them under control.

They worked on their own projects together like that for what felt like forever, Ronald running his troubleshooting ideas by Grelle and Grelle swearing every time she poked herself with the needle. Finally Grelle got the garment to a place she felt like might be serviceable and she took off to change out of her standard Hunter’s garb and try on the Choir disguise. It fit well enough. There was still more she could do but she felt as though if she spent any longer cooped up in the Workshop sewing clothes she’d go positively mad. She ran back inside and called out to Ronald to get his attention.

“Just look at this outfit, they’ll let me into the Choir for sure!” she said, spinning around and doing a little pose. She hoped she looked cute and she was pretty sure she did. It was kind of hard to see anything through the blindfold without her spectacles on, but when she looked in the mirror she thought she looked very striking. Ronald told her it looked nice and gave an easy smile before leaning back against the workbench and bumping into his trick weapon setting off its spinning blade again. He quickly turned around to try and keep it from tearing up the entire building.

Looking back into the mirror she was struck by just how much her long red hair stood out. She wasn’t sure what she should do with it. There was no way she’d be able to fit it up into the hat. She tried a few different styles before settling on a large braided bun that poked out beneath the back of the hat. More than anything she worried about the implications of hiding her beautiful hair from the world, it was one of her greatest assets. With just how much of her body the clothes covered she was thankful for any way William could notice her. Hopefully in the right way.

The blindfold was awkward to navigate with at first and she had to take off her spectacles, letting them hang by their chain around her neck beneath the robes. Eventually she figured out how to see through it properly as well as navigate using her other senses. She skipped down the steps in front of the Workshop ready to leave to try her luck with the Choir before getting startled by the sound of a man’s voice that came from behind her.

“You, Powder Keg _girl_ , come here!” There was something about the way he said the word ‘girl’ that made Grelle’s skin crawl. She wasn’t sure if she should be offended or creeped out. 

It was that weird old wheelchair-bound hunter with the long silver hair that covered his eyes who spent all his time here in the Dream doing… something. She obliged and walked over to where he sat in the garden next to the limp and inanimate shape of a small life-sized doll slumped against a low stone wall. It took the form of a young fancy boy with blue eyes and silvery black hair and it creeped her out more than the old man did. She’d often overhear other Hunters talking to it. So often that she’d even tried talking to it herself, but it never talked back. It made her feel silly, like she was being pranked. All she saw when she looked at it was an ordinary doll. 

“You’re infiltrating the Choir, yeah?” he said, giggling, “Good stuff, very good stuff.”

“So what if I am?”

_“Girl,”_ he started before being overtaken by a fit of giggling at the word. Grelle just stood there impatiently waiting for him to wear himself out, which he eventually did. _“Girl,_ you won't get far with that loud garish thing in your hand, they’ll know exactly what you are the moment they see it,” he said, referring to her saw. At the look of anger on Grelle’s face he added: “I’ll admit it's a right pretty weapon though, so don’t go getting your _panties_ in a twist.” He reached into his large coat to search for something and said: “I have just the trick weapon for a _young woman_ like yourself. Much more subtle, much more elegant.” He made a face when he found what he was looking for and in one swift motion held out what looked to be a pair of scissors.

Grelle was stunned and instinctively grabbed at whatever she was being handed. They really were just a pair of shiny metal scissors. He let out a giggle and she shot him a death glare.

“What the hell is this?! Are you trying to test my patience, old man? I’ll have you know I won't stand to be made a mockery of!”

“No, _girl,_ I’m telling you, they are a trick weapon, take a closer look,” he said, his smile temporarily leaving his face as he tried his best to be earnest. “They were left here by a great Hunter one Night. He left them here and went out to hunt beasts and died. They say his last words were of regret that he hadn’t brought his precious scissors with him. Go on, look.”

She held them up close and lifted her blindfold so she could inspect them better. They were indeed a pair of silver scissors, but there was something strange about them that she couldn’t quite make out at first. Eventually she found the tell tale signs of bloodstone tempering. They even had a couple blood gems socketed into them. The old man wasn’t lying, someone really had made these as a trick weapon of the Workshop.

“...Okay, so they really are a trick weapon, then. What’s their alternate form? How do they work?”

“The trick,” he started, the smile reappearing on his face, “is that there’s two of them!” he said, pulling out a second pair and holding them out for Grelle to take. He broke into guffaws at the sheer absurdity.

Grelle took them before bunching up the front of her robes and using them to muffle a scream. She tucked one of them under her belt before turning back to the old man to see if he had any other golden nuggets for her. It took a moment for his laughter to die down but when he did he addressed her.

“Best be going, then, Powder Keg _girl._ Do come back and tell me about your adventures. An old man gets lonely with just a doll to keep him company. I imagine they should be quite funny,” he said giggling to himself.

Grelle didn’t pause to say goodbye, instead heading to the tombstone that would take her away from the Hunter’s Dream and to the Cathedral Ward.

  
“-and if you die, do remember to leave a pretty corpse, _young woman.”_


	3. Let Us Sit About, And Speak Feverishly

Grelle knew if she hesitated for even a moment she’d be suspicious, but more importantly, if she hesitated at all, as nervous as she was, she might never stop hesitating. So Grelle strode right up to the gate in front of the Orphanage and immediately realized she had no idea if she needed a password or something. She didn’t have a clue if she was even supposed to say anything at all, or just stand there or what. She could feel sweat beading on her forehead only to be neatly wicked away by her blindfold. Stylish and Practical. There wasn’t even anyone on the other side of the gate right now. She saw two timelines before her, one where she stood here petrified for the next hour and was immediately brought under suspicion when someone stumbled upon her, and one where she went off to find some other way in and was caught sneaking around where she potentially shouldn’t be.

She eventually settled on the latter, if only because it made her feel at least a little more of an active participant in her fate. She retraced her steps from when she followed William, finding herself at a door that was previously locked. She tried it and found it to be currently locked as well. She pondered her predicament before remembering the things she lifted off of the Choir Hunter’s body right after killing her. She used her deadly-efficient Hunter instinct to theorize that one of those keys might possibly unlock this door. One did and she jumped up and down in excitement at finding the solution to the puzzle.

She had the good decency to lock the door behind her, before absentmindedly beginning to explore the interior of the Orphanage. There was something so mundane about the atmosphere of the space, it felt more like an old boarding school than the highest echelon of the church, let alone a secret shadowy organization bent on unlocking the dark secrets of the cosmos or world domination. She saw a few Choir members in an alcove discussing something but they paid her no mind as she passed. She felt practically giddy that her disguise worked, now all she needed to do was find William and introduce herself.

The hallway she was in opened up into a large atrium. With as mundane as this place felt, even it wasn’t free from creepy statues of crying women. She sighed at the sight, disappointed since she had been thinking she might have found the one normal place in this city. There were a few more members of the Choir walking about or talking in hushed voices but none of them seemed to notice Grelle’s presence. She was suddenly struck by the realization that the prospect of trying to find William amongst a crowd of people who were dressed exactly identical to him would be a lot harder than she expected. As certain as she had been that the fates of true love would bring them together mere moments ago, now she wasn’t so sure.

She decided to rest against the balcony overlooking the atrium and try and think up some sort of plan. She wasn’t there for very long when she heard quick even footsteps clicking against the tile floor behind her.

“You, brother! Er, sister…” a voice called out as she turned around to see her unmistakable William. So the fates of true love really were on her side, then. He seemed anxious and he was tenderly holding something large wrapped up in a white cloth in his arms. “If you have no other business to attend to, please assist me.”

“Yes sir!” she said, running over to him with more than a little spring in her step.

He walked with purpose as he led her into the back of the building past what looked like classrooms and laboratories. The package in his arms squirmed and let out little squeaks. Any part of her brain that would have been curious about what it might be was either too focused on planning her next move or completely dumbstruck by being so close to her crush.

“We found this one lost in the basement and I just can’t get them to sleep,” he said back to her in a deadpan voice, “I’m afraid I’m terrible with children.” She wasn’t great with children either, but she’d try her best if it was what she needed to do to impress him.

“Well the secret is love… I think. That’s what I’ve heard anyway.” Grelle had started that sentence trying to exude confidence but her nerves got the better of her almost immediately. Ugh, she’d never impress William like that, she needed to be bold. She reached out and took the bundled large baby from his arms. He looked surprised but he didn’t try to stop her. He led her through the door into what looked like some kind of strange nursery. She hadn’t even considered the prospect that the Orphanage actually served double duty as a real orphanage, but the more she thought about it the more it made sense. 

“Shhhh, little sweet one, it’s the Night of the Hunt and all good little girls and boys need to lay their weary heads and sleep this nightmare away,” Grelle cooed as she rocked the thing back and forth. There were a few Yharnam-specific nursery rhymes that Angelina would sing wistfully to herself and Grelle was trying her best to remember the words to them. She pulled back some of the white cloth covering its face and nearly jumped out of her skin at what she saw. 

It was unmistakably a baby of some kind, but certainly not of any creature that came from this dimension. It was sluglike in some ways but more than that it didn’t really look like anything. It was dark and slimy. Instead of a mouth it had a toothy fissure running vertically from the middle of its face all the way down. Instead of eyes it had four pale lumpy sucker pads that twitched and probed around at the air.

William looked at her with concern, and she nervously gazed back down at the thing in her arms. Now she was suspicious, surely any normal member of the Choir would be used to these things. She had to think up a lie to justify her reaction. She was just glad she hadn’t dropped the thing in shock.

“Ah, I was just surprised that they have a little smudge of blood on their face is all,” she said, using her gloved hand to quickly pretend to wipe away at something. It reached a misshapen tentacle up to wrap around her hand. It was actually kind of cute in a weird way and Grelle smiled faintly looking down at it. She squeezed the tentacle before resuming her little coos while she rocked it back and forth.

She got a little caught up in the moment and was brought out of her reverie when William placed a hand on her shoulder and let out a low whistle.

“Wow, I’ve never seen one fall asleep so quickly,” he whispered. Grelle had no way of knowing if the thing was asleep or not so she’d just take his word for it. She was more distracted by the fact that he was currently touching her and most of her brain was having a mechanical failure. “Here,” he said, letting go of Grelle to elicit an involuntary small needy noise out of her that she hoped he didn’t hear, “there’s an empty crib over this way.”

Grelle followed him to it realizing the entire nursery was filled with cribs holding similar strange babies. They weren’t the only ones in the nursery, there were a few other members of the Choir doting on one a few rows down. She placed the little thing into the crib and tucked it in, sighing at its strange adorableness.

* * *

“Sedative?” he asked her when they were on the veranda at the front of the Orphanage, looking out over the Upper Cathedral Ward. He held out a small glass bottle filled with pills in her direction.

“No, thank you,” she replied. Sedatives? Was he trying to drug her? But also being open faced about it? He must have read the quizzical look on her face because he clarified.

“Many of our peers that I work with aren’t able to care for the Celestial Larvae and remain as calm as you are. The sedative can help calm the mind. I can cope with the Larvae okay, but sedatives aren’t my personal favorite way to relax,” he said, producing a small silver case from his robes. “Cigarette?”

“Maybe after we’ve slept together,” was what she thought. What she said was: “Oh, no thank you.” She was so tongue-tied around this guy, she never felt this way around any other men before. Usually she just said whatever she was thinking but here and now she was using so much discretion. She wondered if she was better off for it.

He shrugged and struck a match to light up. The smoke coming off of his cigarette smelled much less like tobacco and much more like sage and lavender. It smelled good and she found herself subconsciously leaning in towards him to get a better whiff.

“There must be some way I can thank you for coming to my rescue,” he said affably after a long exhale. She could certainly think of a few things he could do, and thinking about those things caused her cheeks to heat up.  
  


“On second thought let me see one of those,” she blurted out before he could put the little silver case away. She might actually need something to calm her nerves, the reality of being so close to the object of her affection was finally catching up to her.

“I don’t recognize you, sister,” he said, brow furrowing as he pulled out another thin hand rolled cigarette and touched it to the tip of his own, still between his lips, to light it. There was something so precise yet so casually intimate to his movement that it would have made Grelle swoon if his words didn’t set her even further on edge. 

“It’s a big Choir,” she said, hoping it was true enough as an excuse. She took the cigarette from him and puffed at it.

“That it is. It seems you were created by the Cosmos for the divine purpose of child rearing, the nursery is your department I assume?”

“I’m a Hunter, actually. Like you, William,” she said, instinctively reaching to pull out her saw before remembering that the scissors on her belt were her new trick weapon.

“Then you have me at a disadvantage, what’s your name? I think I should know what to cry out next time I have a fussy Celestial Larvae in my arms.”

“I’ll make you cry out my name alright,” she thought before once again settling for the safer option. “It’s Grelle.”

“It’s a pleasure then, Grelle,” he said, turning to face her. She expected him to hold out his hand for a shake but instead he held his left arm straight up in the air and his right straight out to the side. She worried if she stood there looking at him confused for too long he might get suspicious so she mirrored the action, left arm out, right arm up. He just stared at her blankly, facial expression as neutral as ever, all the more unreadable for the blindfold he wore. They stood there like that for a moment and then a moment longer. 

Just as Grelle’s arms started to get tired he smoothly switched his arms positions keeping the perfect ninety degree angle as his hands arced across the sky as though they were the heavens rotating around them. Grelle mirrored this action as well. Grelle was worried she might have befallen a practical joke and that they had realized she was an imposter from the very beginning. That she was about to be shot in the back of the head. 

Mercifully, William lowered his arms and Grelle let herself relax. He went back to smoking his cigarette and she did the same. Without a word he turned back to look out at the dark city. She wondered if he expected her to leave, if he did this was a bad turn of events. She needed to make a move right now before he lost interest in her forever. She was formulating a plan when a voice called out from the small courtyard below.

“William, is that you?”

“Yes, Brother, what is it?”

“There’s a beast in Central Yharnam that the Church Hunters called for our assistance with. Ordinarily, we’d just leave it to the others but this one was a Cleric, and a powerful one at that.

“Hold on, I’ll be right down,'' William called, putting out his cigarette on the banister before climbing up onto it, pulling out his telescoping trick weapon, and extending it all the way to the ground below. He muttered to himself and then looked back at her.

“Well, Hunter Grelle, fancy any more overtime?” he asked, holding out his arm to her. Realizing what he was offering it was all she could do not to get a nosebleed right then and there. Instead, she climbed up onto the banister with him. She embraced him and he wrapped his arm around her. The feeling of his body pressed up against her felt exactly like it had in all of her fantasies, and he smelled faintly of aftershave beneath the overwhelming scent of his cigarette. They rode the pole down to meet with the other awaiting Choir Hunters. 

* * *

When they finally cornered the Cleric Beast it had already been bloodied by the pursuant Hunters. Even still it managed to not insignificantly thin their numbers before it was slaughtered. Grelle tried her best to contribute to the fight but in between her awkward little scissors and the distractingly beautiful William she felt like she didn’t exude peak performance. The scissors were fast and deadly in close quarters and she theorized with the aid of a beast pellet or fire paper they could be very powerful in slicing down even the heartiest monstrosities this city could produce, but she missed the range and staying power of her lovely noisey saw. She wondered just how long she’d need to keep up this façade. Watching William work was as enthralling as ever. The way he darted back and forth striking out at the beast’s weak points, laying down clouds of area denial with his modified flamesprayer, made her swoon. Many of the Choir Hunters had one and while it lacked the kick of a proper firearm she was still impressed with its practicality.

In the beast’s death throws it lashed out wildly with its massive furry arm. As close as her scissors required her to operate she barely had time to register that she was even in any danger before she was knocked into the air and flung a dozen yards to smash into a brick wall.

“Grelle, are you okay? Are you hurt?” She dimly realized William was standing over her. The beast was down and the other wounded were being tended to. A few of the Choir members were collecting fur and blood samples from its carcass.

“Only my pride, I think.”

“There are far worse things to break,” he said, holding out his hand to help her up.

“Not one of my finer moments.” She took it and used it to spring back to her feet.

“No, I can’t imagine it would be,” he observed, not in a particularly jovial tone. It struck Grelle as kind of harsh actually, like he might genuinely be disappointed in her performance. Ordinarily she’d want to prove him wrong but more than anything in that moment she wanted to run away, find an entrance into the Pthumerian Labyrinth, and hide in that dark hole. This man inverted her every instinct and she wondered if that was despite or because of her overwhelming attraction to him.

“The next Hunt I accompany you on will be better, I assure you,” Grelle said.

“I should hope so.” It seemed like the affable, vaguely flirtatious William she’d met on the balcony was gone to be replaced with a man much closer to the one she’d admired from afar. Cold and contumelious, traits that in a way she found even more compelling, but at the exact moment not so much.

“I'll meet you back at the Orphanage, there’s some business here in Central Yharnam I need to attend to,” Grelle lied. There absolutely was no reason for her to leave, but she really just needed a way out of this embarrassing situation.

“Suit yourself, Grelle,” he said, dismissively. He paused for a moment before adding: “I hope I do meet you again, soon,” in a much softer tone.

Grelle wandered the streets for a while before making her way to Angelina’s clinic, not that she felt particularly compelled to check up on her. She really just needed a friendly face to process some of her feelings with.

This time she had to knock on the clinic door several times before she heard an answer from the other side. 

“Yes, yes who is it?”

“It’s me.”

“Oh, Grelle! I’m actually so glad you're here, hold on,” she said and Grelle heard the locks and bolts to the door being undone. She opened the door and was immediately taken aback by the clothes Grelle was wearing. “So, you’re actually trying the Choir disguise, then?” she said, amused.

“Would you be surprised to learn that it’s actually working?”

Angelina made a pot of tea over one of the burners in her lab and poured them both a cup. Grelle missed the coffee of her homeland but, as far as she could tell, even tea was a bit uncommon in a city so much more obsessed with blood than any beverage. They sat across from each other in a small parlor Angelina kept for patients awaiting treatment. The sofas were cushy and more than anything it was just nice to be off of her feet. Grelle told her about what had transpired at the Orphanage and how her interactions with William had gone but Angelina didn’t have a lot of comments and really seemed impatient to talk about her big breakthroughs. Grelle indulged her and let her prattle on about things she really hadn’t the faintest idea of understanding. In between her and Othello, Grelle seemed to have a thing for listening to nerds dump information about things she had no interest in.

“And so it would seem that I had been going about this all wrong with regard to the nepheretic substrate. I just need to reduce the lipid bilayer for less than two hours and a lower temperature and- AH!” Angelina was cut off doubling over in pain. She clutched at her temple and spilled her tea on the floor. Grelle got up to sit next to her and wrap her arm around her shoulders.

“Angelina, what’s going on?” she whispered empathetically.

“It’s just these migraines. I started getting them a few hours ago,” she said through gritted teeth. “Could you get me one of the fresh vials from my lab bench? They’re the only thing that helps them pass quicker.” 

Grelle got up and walked into Angelina’s lab. It was a lot messier than it had been earlier tonight. Books were scattered around on the ministration tables and there were half filled bottles from discarded experiments all around the room. She found the vials in question, they were thinner and cleaner than the typical Yharnamite blood vials. The blood inside was incredibly thin and refined and upon them was a small tape label that read “Choir” in a neat elegant red ink.

She returned to Anglina who was exactly like she left her and sat down beside her again. Without much fanfare she plunged the tip of the syringe into her thigh. The effect was immediate. Angelina's body loosened and her head lolled back as a deep noise emerged from her throat. She looked a little woozy from the sudden influx of refined blood into her system. She swayed back and forth before looking up at Grelle with half lidded eyes and a coy smile.

“I love you, Grelle.”

“You’re welcome, but perhaps that blood might have been a bit too concentrated for you,” Grelle said jokingly.

“I mean it Grelle, you’re so chivalrous,” she said, wrapping her arms around her torso. Grelle’s body stiffened immediately at that. She liked the woman, a lot. In some of the deeper parts of her mind she might even admit she had some feelings for her, but this wasn’t the kind of love she had imagined. 

“Angelina…”

“You’re so much better to me than my husband was. I wish you would have stayed a man, Grelle, you’re so handsome and kind. I know it’s improper for an aristocratic Yharnamite to marry an outsider but, if only you were a man, I would make you my husband. Once my research has come to fruition… do you think…” her voice trailed off into a whisper, “you might father my children?”

Grelle stood up abruptly and Angelina fell prone onto the sofa.

“I believe I have somewhere I need to be.”

“Grelle, I’m… I’m sorry, please don’t go,” she said. Grelle turned back to look at her, she really did seem apologetic, and perhaps a bit more lucid. Grelle had said much worse things to people while under the influence, she forgave her. Still, _in vino veritas... In sanguine veritas?_ She wasn't particularly well versed in dead languages.

“It’s okay. However, it remains the Night of the Hunt. What kind of Hunter would I be if I stayed in all evening?” Grelle asked, trying to lighten the mood. Angelina’s face just grew more sober.

“Grelle, while you’re out there, would you be able to collect me some more special blood?” she said, sitting up.

“Another one?” Grelle said, exacerbated that they were going through this again so soon. “I literally just brought you two this night.”

“Please just one more. I’m so close to a major breakthrough and with all the progress I’ve made tonight I’ve managed to exhaust most of my supply. I’ve been on a roll Grelle, something about tonight just has my mind running a mile a minute. Here, I made you a list of suitable targets.” Angelina handed Grelle a folded up piece of paper. It had over two dozen names and addresses all written in that same elegant red cursive.

“I don’t know, Angelina.” It didn’t seem like such a good idea. Grelle was feeling a little burnt out on murder at the moment. Besides if these experiments were giving her these awful migraines they couldn’t be healthy. 

“Just, consider it. I’ll be waiting for you here,” she said. Grelle sighed and put the folded up paper into her pocket before leaving the clinic.

* * *

Grelle walked through the deserted streets of Central Yharnam. Any beasts that had been around had already been slaughtered and their carcasses were heaped into bonfires, else lay where they fell in the gutter.

“Grelle! Or as some say, Grell!” called out a voice from behind her. She turned around to see Othello in his big dumb Mensis Cage jog after her from out of an alleyway.

Right now Grelle seemed to be two for two with regards to excusing herself from awkward interactions with her friends and it looked like it might just become three. There was rarely a conversation between her and Othello that wasn’t weird, but at least they were weird in an amusing way. Halfway to her he tripped over his untied shoelaces and face planted into the cobbled streets. She wasn’t sure if he was protected by the cage or hurt worse by it. Grelle ran over to him to help him up, but his facial expression hadn’t changed and he was still sporting a large smile.

“I thought I told you to come to my laboratory to see me, instead of that civilian Minister,” he said after spitting a mouthful of blood onto the ground. He swayed unsteady on his feet, though Grelle wondered if that wasn’t just his usual Mensis delirium.

“Angelina? I can’t just stop seeing her. I mean, she’s my... My friend,” Grelle said, uncertainty creeping into her voice. Both at Angelina’s abilities as a physician and at their friendship. “Besides, I’m worried you might turn me into a slug or something.”

“You’d be all the luckier for it, trust me,” he said. Grelle didn’t know what to say in response to that but thankfully he filled the silence. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been out of the Unseen Village. I forgot how the rest of Yharnam smelled, it’s all so crisp and human. The air in the Village can get so stagnant.”

“What are you doing loose out of your underground prison, anyway?” she asked, a smirk forming on her lips despite herself.

“I carry my cage with me wherever I go, Grelle, just as you do. Mine’s just not covered in skin and hair,” said he tapping at her skull. She caught his arm and gave it a gentle squeeze before returning it to him. He smiled bashfully and realized he hadn’t actually answered her question. “Lesser Amygdala can crowd into the Cathedral Ward and it’s always a good idea for one of us to check up on them. That, and I am a little lost.” Grelle didn’t know what an Amygdala was but the thought of her little dweeb all alone in the beast infested city was too much to bear.

“Why don’t I help you find your way home, little duckling?”

“That would be appreciated,” he said, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet and twiddling his thumbs nervously while his face remained calm and content.

They ran into a little trouble on their way towards Yahar'gul in the form of a cadre of lesser lycanthropes. Ordinarily it would be nothing she couldn’t handle, but she was still getting the hang of her new trick weapon. Othello ran around like a chicken with his head cut off during the fight and she was all the worse for being half distracted keeping track of him, worried he might slip away from her or trip over his still untied shoes again. Even still, she managed to dispatch their assailants without needing to pop too many of her blood vials.

“Ugh, these scissors suck. They’re the main reason William doesn’t think I’m cool. Why couldn’t I have just taken that lightning ball on a stick?” she complained once she finally wrangled Othello back in and calmed him down.

“Ah, the tonitrus? That’s a popular one amongst our Yahar'gul Hunters,” he said following along behind her. “Where ever did you encounter one?”

“The woman I killed for this disguise had one.”

“Disguise?”

“The Choir robes I’m wearing?” Grelle said dumbfounded.

“Oh, so you are, aren't you?” he observed, as though he had only just noticed. He adjusted his glasses through the bars of his cage. “You look good in them, and they actually work as a disguise? I’m surprised we never tried anything like that. Tell me what you’ve found, my peers have no interest in the cosmos, unfortunately, nor academic espionage.”

She told him about her limited experience with the Choir so far as they made their way to the Unseen Village. He listened with rapt attention but took a particular interest in the Celestial Larvae. He kept asking confusing questions about their anatomy that Grelle could barely remember.

“Alright, you can find your way from here, I hope,” she said when they got to the shrouded church.

“I think so,” he said, turning back to face her. “Ever since my initiation I’ve been seeing so many things so much more clearly, and yet as I do some of the basic common sense I’d accumulated up until this point in my life has become a lot more foggy. I’d be the first to admit it’s not an ideal tradeoff. Anyway, thank you for coming to my rescue, Grelle. I’ll find a way to repay you.”

“No need, Othello. Just getting you back for the tip off about the Choir. I think you might have inadvertently given me what I needed to meet my future husband. Honestly, talking to you has boosted some of my sapped confidence. You’re a good friend. Sometimes I feel like you’re the only person outside of the Powder Kegs I don’t disappoint.”

“Ah, well I suppose I should feel bad about asking but if you should get the chance to bring me one of these Celestial Larvae for study I would really appreciate it. As I said, my fellow scholars in the School don’t particularly care for the cosmos and I believe there’s a lot of knowledge that could be gathered from them.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” she called as she left to return to the Choir. 

* * *

Grelle was in the nursery again, just watching the Larvae sleep. She didn’t run into William anywhere on the way in and something about the little otherworldly babies was enthralling. She wasn’t sure if she had the mental fortitude to steal one away and give it to Othello to vivisect or prod with electrical diodes. 

They really were cute, despite it all and she found herself gently petting the head of one as it stirred in its sleep, troubled by nightmares no doubt.

“Thought I might find you here,” said a measured voice from behind her. She didn’t need to turn around to know who it was. That voice had been plastered to her mind since the moment she heard it.

“I think I’d like to have children, some day. I don’t know if I ever can, though,” she said, the small child curling one of its tentacle arms around her touch. She had never really thought about her future before. Coming to Yharnam had been a last resort, else she would have surely perished. With how bleak her future had been she never gave it much thought beyond the instant anesthetic of carnal pleasures. Could she marry William and raise a family here in this cursed city? She couldn’t bear children from her own body, but could siring them through Angelina prove a fitting substitute or would it just prove as fatally dysmorphic as she feared?

“It is the nature of all things that they must seek to reproduce,” he said, putting his hand on her shoulder like before. She gently leaned her head over to press her cheek to the back of his gloved hand. It was firm and masculine and kind.

“Don’t I know it, William.”


	4. The Grand Lake Of Mud, Hidden Now, From Sight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Super mild suicidal ideation during one line in this chapter, just a heads up.

It had felt like weeks since she had been admitted into the Choir and yet it was still the same Night of the Hunt. Since her confidence boost Grelle had gone on the offensive. What she was doing was so inherently ridiculous, infiltrating the most secretive organization in all of Yharnam just to get close to a hot man. The absurdity of the situation was not lost on her.

While she had at first been convinced that her imposter nature would be obvious to even the most oblivious of observers; as she became bolder, audacious even, the belief amongst her new peers that she had always been there only grew firmer. She had met some kind folks in the Celestial Larvae Kindergarten, as well as a few really clever and talented hunters. There was even a squeaky little nerd that reminded her of Othello, and of whose gender she wasn’t quite sure, that she loved chatting up. It comforted her knowing her gender deviancy wasn’t wholly unusual in this unusual place.

Through it all was William, the apple of her eye. She was astutely focused and constantly followed him around trying her best to bother him into loving her. She thought it might be working. His once vaguely flirtatious and cool demeanor had been on the backfoot ever since. He clearly had no way of processing her advances, so he defaulted to a mix of chagrin and aloofness. It didn’t matter, she already knew he liked her. He couldn’t get the blood back in the vial if he wanted to.

As they grew closer he became colder, in a way that only made her long for him more. In their private moments together however it was a roll of the dice whether or not she’d meet the cold solid stone wall or the warm genial, almost familial, William. 

She also found out there was an actual real orphanage within the Orphanage, other than the one that cared for the little Cosmic worms. There were rambunctious human children whose parents were killed during Hunts that were being raised to be top scholars and Hunters for the Choir. As good as she was with otherworldly babies she found herself more than able to care for her own species, surprisingly so. She had always just sort of assumed she’d be terrible with children because of what she was.

There were a few kids who seemed incapable of sleeping the Night away and she suggested taking them outside to run around and tire themselves out. That was what her father always did when she and her brothers had too much energy.

That was how she found herself sitting in the Lumenflower Gardens with Sascha, watching the children play tag amongst the bizarre foliage. 

“And so I told him, ‘is that a Kos Parasite in your pocket or do you bear the Caryll Rune of Communion?’” they said and Grelle doubled over in laughter. She wasn’t even close to getting the joke but the words they said were silly and made her laugh regardless. When she finally recovered from her laughter she noticed someone standing behind her.

“Oh, my darling William! You’ve come to join me for a moonlight stroll through the gardens? Hm?” she commented when she realized who it was. He was just as stoic as ever, but Grelle thought she might have seen his lips twitch into a smile for a brief moment. 

“Not today, Grelle. I was actually hoping that Sascha might be able to join us in a communion with the Daughter of the Cosmos,” he said, turning to the squat soft faced nerd. “Your insight is always invaluable.”

“Ah, then perhaps someday we can come here and watch our own children frolic amongst the Lumenflowers,” Grelle sighed, leaning back.

“I unfortunately can’t be interrupted in my observations of the Lumenflowers, but I believe Grelle said she’d be able to help with this evening’s interpretations.” Sascha was a great wingperson. Grelle not so subtly gave them a thumbs up when William’s back was turned.

“Fine,” William exhaled as Grelle bounced up and down in excitement, jumping to her feet following after him.

“It’s almost like we’re finally going on a proper date, William,” she said. He didn’t have anything to say to that, but he did look over his shoulder at her through his blindfold out of the corner of his eye. Unfortunately she wasn’t alone with him for very long and soon she found herself with a handful of other Choir members assembled towards the back rafters of the Grand Cathedral. They spoke idly about plans that Grelle didn’t really understand before shuffling onto an elevator and descending deep into the uncut rock of the mountain. After a small chamber they stepped out into a large dank ruinous cavern.

At the back of the cavern was something. A big something. Something was really the only word Grelle could think of to describe it. Whatever it was, it was facing away from them. This must be the Daughter of the Cosmos that everyone was always talking about. She was giant and pale and damp and slimy and she didn’t really look like anything. She was strangely familiar, though. Overall very slug-like in appearance. She had eight primary limbs amongst a cluster of dark wriggling tentacles; a pair of skeletal wings that were carpeted in small feelers, four massive branching tentacles, and a pair of thick repulsive appendages that could have either been arms or tree roots. 

There was no use standing around, might as well introduce herself.

She dimly recognized confused and distressed muttering coming from the Choir members behind her as she trudged through the swampy morass of the cavern floor. The Daughter of the Cosmos was hunched over there as though she were sleeping or praying or conceivably some sort of practice Grelle was unfamiliar with. She walked up around her and waved, trying to get her attention.

Where a face might have been instead there was a cluster of huge stark white floppy macaronis, and Grelle managed to see a little bit of fleshy red hidden behind them. She had definitely seen uglier women before. Grelle realized suddenly that this creature’s form was so much like the Celestial Larvae in many ways. Was this their mother? If she got along so well with the Larvae there was no way she wouldn’t get along with their mom. 

She stepped closer to her and was about to hold out her hand for a mucousy handshake when she looked back at William and remembered their introduction. Instead she straightened her back and held her arms up and to the side at a ninety degree angle.

“Hi there, my name is Choir Hunter Grelle, I don’t believe we’ve met,” she said. The thing turned her... head, she was pretty certain it was her head, to face her. Its white face tubes rippled and squirmed, slowly parting to expose more of whatever was underneath. She saw more of the red meaty flesh but also a pair of tiny green eyes became visible amongst the macaronis. They were looking at her, but they weren't focused there, it was almost as though they were looking through her into her soul.

“Oh hey, green eyes? Green eyes!” She lifted her blindfold to show off her own green eyes. “Green eyes!” she said again, “We have so much in common!” There was no response from the massive creature.

“So uhh… do you like makeup?” she asked, trying to break the ice. The Daughter of the Cosmos probably didn’t like makeup since she didn’t have a proper face, but it was the only girly thing she could think of to talk about. She heard William splash up behind her and he put his hands firmly on both of her shoulders.

“Grelle,” he started in his typical exhausted disgruntled tone, but was interrupted when the Daughter of the Cosmos reached down a giant ribbed tentacle and touched it to Grelle’s face. She felt William’s body tense up behind her at that. The tentacle was delicate in the way it traced up her face to lift up her blindfold again.

“See,” Grelle said, “Green eyes!” It looked at her and so did William who seemed positively flabbergasted. Apparently, she’d done a good job making contact because he wasn’t dragging her away by the ear like she was afraid of.

“Green eyes,” he confirmed, joining in, lifting up his blindfold. Grelle looked over at him. It was the first time she’d seen his eyes up close. Of course there were times without the blindfold when he’d been dressed as an ordinary Church Hunter, but those were always too far away. His eyes were the same pretty green as her own, but they looked so much better on him. She could easily find herself getting lost in those eyes like they were one of the labyrinths beneath Yharnam. Actually, she was pretty sure this chamber was part of that network. She could spend all Night in those labyrinths.

* * *

They took Grelle with them to commune with the sweet tentacle monster, that she later learned was named Ebrietas, many more times after that. She didn’t understand the first thing about what exactly she was or how her presence helped the scholars interpret her, but she’d certainly had worse friends than Ebrietas. She was pretty sure contact with her inflicted the same kind of frenzy on other members of the choir as the Larvae did, but for whatever reason she was immune to it. She wondered if she might be just too simpleminded for deep chthonic truths to phase her.

While she felt like William respected her more he didn’t seem to show it, not around others anyway. When they would spend time together smoking his strange herbal cigarettes, on the balcony before the Orphanage, he’d open up to her, but usually about anything but his feelings.

This time all he was able to talk about was how much he despised the Vilebloods. Grelle supposed that hatred was a feeling, so on some level this counted. 

“Sometimes I wonder if I’m the odd one out for being so repulsed by them, no one else seems to care. We have nothing to do with them and their designs on power, we’re effectively a neutral party. Sometimes I think I might defect and join the Executioners, if only I didn’t find them such self-righteous pricks,” he said, adjusting his blindfold after finishing up his miniature rant. He was still calm and collected, but the way he spat out his distaste betrayed his seething rage beneath his surface. He groaned annoyed with himself and put his palm to his forehead. “I shouldn’t have said that. About defecting, I mean. Damn it Grelle, why do I feel so comfortable talking to you?”

“Don’t worry, I won’t speak to a soul of your treachery, William,” Grelle joked, giving him a warm smile. “As your future wife it’s my duty to keep your secrets.” He ignored that.

“It’s so strange to me that you’re a Hunter, Grelle. While you have such an... interesting personality, you seem to be so much better suited to caring for children. So very much unlike the Vilebloods.” Boy, did she wish that were the truth. She ignored the slight jab at her hunting prowess. She’d prove her skill to him once she was finally able to use her beautiful saw again. Still, the compliments about her femininity made her blush.

“Oh William, if you think I’d make such a wonderful mother, don’t you think it’s high time we get busy making children of our own, hm?” she said giving him half lidded eyes, until she remembered her blindfold kept him from picking up on her sexy gaze.

“I wish you would stop joking about such things, Grelle,” he sighed, looking back out over the Upper Cathedral Ward, at nothing in particular. Joking, right.

What the hell was she doing, she infiltrated the most exclusive secret society at the highest echelons of the most powerful institution in all of Yharnman and she was still passing off her attraction to him as a joke. Where was her hesitation coming from? Even after she got over her initial nervousness she still had this aesthetic barrier she maintained in the form of facetiousness.

What did this man William mean to her? She went through all this absurd stuff for what? Just to be near a man she had a crush on? She’d even found that she really liked him outside of her crush, and they got along so well. Part of her had already resigned herself to the idea that he’d hate her, just like he pretended to when they were around other people, before she even walked into the Orphanage. 

Maybe that was the problem, he actually did like her. She pulled this ridiculous stunt all so she could badger around with a man she knew would hate her, and she didn’t care because if she was found out the worst thing that could happen would be her death. Now there was the possibility of rejection from a guy she actually thought she had a chance with, and the reality of that possibility was causing her to get cold feet. She had to take the plunge.

“It’s not a joke,” she said, perhaps a bit too quietly.

“Pardon?” he replied, turning his head slightly to hear her better.

“It’s not a joke, William. I’ve admired you from afar for months now. When I say I want to be your wife and bear your children it isn’t a joke. I love you.”

“Oh,” he said, taking a long drag off his cigarette and turning back to the city.

“Excuse me but: ‘Oh?’ A lady confesses her feelings for you and all you have to say is ‘Oh?’” she said, throwing her arms up in frustration and pacing around behind him.

“Yes,” he said flatly, without turning to face her. 

“Gah! What? I can’t believe you! What?” she shouted, more confused than anything. This was not at all how she expected this to go. She had been ready for rejection. She had been ready for him to sweep her off her feet and kiss her until the Night of the Hunt ended. But just blankly accepting her feelings and not saying anything more was not something she could have even imagined let alone been ready for. “So, do you like me back or not?”

He took another long drag off his cigarette and seemed to consider the question for a time all while Grelle was fuming behind him.

“I’ll need to think about it.”

“Ugh!” she groaned as she stomped away from him. She needed to get out of this place for a while, it was definitely getting to her head.

* * *

Grelle looked at the note in her hands. The first name on the list of women Angelina wanted was off in Hemwick Charnel Lane. She briefly considered actually going and abducting her. She didn’t have anything better to do, and she felt too numb inside to feel particularly bad about carrying out Angelina’s grim errands, despite how she might have protested when she last saw her. Was that Angelina’s game? Did she know that no matter how she treated Grelle she’d always do her bidding since she held Grelle’s life saving treatment in her hands?

She thought about William and his hatred for Vilebloods. If she continued down this path was she really any different from them. She wanted to impress him. What did this man William really mean to her? Redemption? A chance at a happy husband in a happy life? As it stood she didn’t even know if he’d reciprocate her feelings, but she was putting all this undue effort into wooing him.

All she knew of his feelings was that, to him, she wasn’t cut out for violence. Was he right? Was Grelle’s truly not meant to bring about pain and suffering? She used to think the only way her body might become one that wasn’t intrinsically built to destroy was through Angelina’s ministrations, but it felt like her time in the Choir had shown her another way. It was almost as though the capacity to be a mother, to be nurturing, was in her all along.

Still, physically she did  _ need _ to turn into a woman lest she find herself on the wrong end of her own quicksilver.

Grelle found herself heading towards Central Yharnam instead. She needed to renegotiate the details of her and Angelina’s business arrangement. 

She knocked on the door to her clinic and didn’t receive a response. She knocked again, and after what felt like ten minutes she finally decided she wasn’t coming. It wasn’t like Angelina to ignore her, even if she was upset.

She tried the door handle and found it to be unlocked. That was very unlike Angelina, who always locked the door after Grelle left. She was more than a little concerned for the woman’s safety, and she hurried along inside to find her laboratory empty and devoid of life. She scrambled around the dark clinic nearly tripping over ministration tables and other medical equipment as her panic rose inside of her. She certainly had her disagreements with Angelina, but she still thought of her as a friend and thinking about something bad happening to her was upsetting to say the least.

She entered the small waiting parlor which was better illuminated than the rest of the deserted clinic. The room was exactly as she’d left it save for the way the floor was covered in blood trails. She could see red legs poking out from the ground behind the sofa, but the rest of her body was concealed behind it. With terror in her heart Grelle crept around it to see her. 

To her immense relief it looked like Angelina was alive. She was covered in blood, though it was hard to tell with her bright red coat, and she had her face buried in her hands, but her chest still rose and fell. Grell let out a breath she had been holding since Angelina first didn’t greet her at the door.

“Grelle, I…” she said, looking up at her through her fingers. Grelle opened her mouth to ask what happened when she heard a small squeak from behind her. She turned to see an exceptionally small Celestial Larvae squirming towards her. Instinctively she picked it up and held it in her arms. It chirped cheerfully and snuggled up to her breast, face tentacles drooping as though its eyelids were fluttering closed. She pet gently at its head.

“It worked, Grelle,” Angelina whispered from behind her, “it worked... but, then again… it didn’t.” Angelina hunched over and Grelle couldn’t tell if she was laughing or sobbing.

“Angelina…” Grelle started but trailed off, she didn’t know exactly what she wanted to say.

“Grelle, I’m so close. I was just barely off with this formula.” She finally lowered her hands from her face, and looked back up at Grelle. “You completed my shopping list, that’s why you’re here,” she said, her voice filling with excitement. “Oh Grelle, I knew I could trust you, my gallant knight.” Grelle didn’t like being called a gallant knight, and not only because it filled her head with thoughts of Cainhurst Castle and the Vilebloods.

“Actually, Angelina,” Grelle started remembering what she came here to do, although she was apprehensive given Angelina’s current state. “I didn’t. I didn’t bring you any blood. There’s got to be another way, Angelina, I mean-”

“Not for me, there isn’t!” she interrupted, nearly shrieking the words in her desperation. Who was this woman lying on the ground before her? Grelle just stared at her, really taking her in for the first time since she came into the parlor. She didn’t look anything like the Angelina Grelle had befriended over her time in Yharnam. She was thin, and pale, and gaunt. There were deep dark bags under her eyes and her hair was frazzled and unkempt. “I need my blood Grelle, now you go out there and get me my blood!”

Grelle’s once placid face fell into an angry snarl. She bit her tongue, remembering who she was talking to, and recognizing the state she was in. Grelle was far too nice for this woman. She tried to formulate a more level headed response when she was interrupted again.

“Need I remind you that our contract is non-negotiable. If you don’t bring me that blood, I won't be able to seep your body with the feminizing poisons you so deeply think you need. Now get out of here! And take that wretched thing away! I can’t stand to think about how it crawled out of my body!” she shouted, shuddering violently at the thought of the Celestial Larvae.

Grelle did just that. Although whether she was going to actually provide Angelina with the blood she wanted was another story.

* * *

Grelle walked back towards the Cathedral District with no particular destination in mind. 

“Oh little one, we’re really in it now,” she said, looking down at the Larvae’s tiny non-face. And just what was she supposed to do with this thing? Could she really just show up on the Orphanage’s doorstep with a Larvae and say she had no idea where she got it? Maybe she should take it back to her own apartment.

The thing was asleep. She had more than enough experience with the creatures to know when they were sleeping at this point. She could even tell them apart somewhat. This one had a very distinctive look to it. It actually kind of resembled Angelina in some ways. Obviously, there were a lot of ways in which the human form didn’t map cleanly onto that of the Celestial Larvae, but there certainly was a resemblance. It also vaguely reminded her of something else. Or someone else.

No... it couldn’t be…

_ “Do you think you might father my children?” _ Angelina had said. Of course there were plenty of times the minister could have taken a tissue sample from Grelle, without her knowing. Even earlier that Night when she treated her wounds, though she suspected this one-woman conspiracy had existed for much longer.

She looked back down into the thing’s face and couldn’t see a child anymore. She saw… she didn’t know what she saw. A reminder of her inadequacies as a woman, perhaps. Could she face William’s decision with this thing bare in her arms?

She wanted it out of her sight nearly as badly as Angelina had.

Othello’s laboratory was dusty and cramped. Much more like a professor’s office than a proper place for blood experimentation. Thankfully her nimble feet helped her slip into it undetected as she knew they both would be in a lot of trouble should their fraternization be discovered, even before she donned the Choir garb.

He had his nose in a book behind a large heavy looking desk. Or cage in a book, so to speak since it didn’t let him get too close. It couldn’t be easy reading with that thing on. 

She walked up to the desk, and he didn’t look up from his book. She unceremoniously dumped the squirming thing onto his desk to a loud squeak. William was wrong, there wasn’t an ounce of her body that was meant to nurture. She was Hunter, a disciple of blood, she was meant to slaughter prey. Still, she felt a pang of guilt at the creature’s pathetic sounds, a guilt that every part of her worked to tamp down. Othello looked up from his book at the noise and set it down once he realized what it was she had brought him.

“Isn’t that interesting…” he said, prodding at the thing with his finger as it writhed around in distress on his desk, “thank you oh so very much Grelle, my mind is already racing with possibilities.”

“Hope you like it,'' she called out over her shoulder, not wanting to spend another moment in the same room as the thing she sired.

She didn’t want to think about too much of anything. Still she walked back to the Orphanage, head stormy and full of negative feelings. She tried her best to put the Larvae out of her mind and instead thought about William. What did this man really mean to her? Redemption? A chance at a happy husband in a happy life? Whatever it was Grelle wanted to find she certainly hadn’t gotten it. Perhaps it was time to end this farce. She missed her Powder Keg friends, and more than that she missed her saw. She missed the thrill of the Hunt. She liked some of the new friends she’d made, but if William rejected her then there was nothing for her there. Right? She wasn’t a kind gentle real woman; she was a Hunter. 

It certainly didn’t matter just how at home she felt caring for the children of the Orphanage both human and inhuman, a mother wasn’t what she was meant to be.

She was walking through the grand entrance hall when she heard a familiar voice call out her name from behind. She turned around and before she knew what was happening he was kissing her. His lips were softer than she ever thought they might be. She closed her eyes and leaned into him. 

She heard a wooting from the balcony above that might have been Sascha, only to be silenced by someone standing next to them. It looks like her decision to leave the Choir was solved by circumstance. A very pleasant circumstance indeed.

She smiled into the kiss as William frowned. Still he pulled her closer to him and almost dipped her down. The kiss was nice, but something scratched at the back of her mind that kept her from enjoying the moment she’d dreamed of so fully. Something small that looked very much like her.


	5. Grant Us Eyes, Grant Us Eyes

“Oh Willywoolly~” Grelle sang running up behind her boyfriend to give him a solid and fierce hug when he finally returned with his Hunting Party. He made a loud oof with the embrace, a sign that she had maybe squeezed him too hard. She let go and gave him room to breathe. 

“Careful Grelle, I don’t know how I feel about public displays of affection,” he said after catching his breath, and looking around the hallway at the other members of the Choir going about their business. It didn’t look like any paid them any mind, but he still seemed a little embarrassed by her.

“But you confirmed your love for me by kissing me in front of everyone. Seems like a bit of a double standard,” Grelle pouted, folding her arms in front of her chest.

“That was… That was different,” he stammered. She loved sending him off balance like this. He always seemed off balance around her. She wasn’t sure about his take on the matter though, sometimes it really felt like he enjoyed being taken out of his comfort zone by her, but overall he was quite the enigma of a man and she preferred him that way. Grelle had little interest in solving mysteries. He sighed and leaned in to plant a little chaste kiss on the corner of her mouth before turning to continue down the hallway.

“So where do you want to go on our date?” she asked excitedly, bouncing down the hall after him. Time was weird but it really felt like it had been a few days since they had become official. Still they had smooched a couple times, and he had promised they’d go do something together after he returned. As much as Grelle felt expected to spend her time in the nursery tending to the Larvae she found herself shunning the place. She didn’t really want to think about why, but she knew why. Instead she found herself milling about the Orphanage, bored out of her mind. Which was why she was so glad he was finally back.

“I’ve just learned that the higher ups called an important meeting I must attend,” he said flatly, not slowing or even acknowledging her with his body beyond a slight tilt of his head. Grelle had known the man long enough to realize his flat affect didn’t always indicate disapproval, but that didn’t stop her from worrying.

“But what about our daaate?” Grelle whined, rolling the vowel sound in ‘date’ around her mouth for as long as she rolled her head around on her shoulders exacerbated, “I wanted you to show me the lake!” He turned his head towards her a little more, a soft frown forming on his lips.

“I believe it will have to happen another time,” he said, he did genuinely sound disappointed and apologetic, or at least she thought he did. “Why don’t you come with me to my meeting?” he added. He must really feel bad, William never invited her to any of his meetings with the higher ups.

“Are you sure I can come?” she asked, touching her pointer finger to her chin, genuinely worried about getting him in trouble.

“Honestly, you probably can’t, but,” he sighed and looked at her in the face, “I trust you.”

She followed him into a part of the Orphanage she’d never been before. The meeting room was as smoky as it was brightly lit, it looked like it had been once used as a medical lab only to be repurposed. Grelle eventually realized they must be underneath the building, in or near the basement that she had initially entered in the early hours of the Night. There was a small gathering of other members of the Choir who welcomed them in. One member was clearly differentiated, not by his garb, which was the same as every other member of the Choir, but with the way he stood at the end of the long raw wooden work table. The members of the Choir were technically scholarly peers, but Grelle quickly learned that some peers were more peer-y than others, and this guy seemed in charge, at least for the time being. 

They didn’t take time to exchange pleasantries before he got into the matters at hand.

“Ran-Mao is missing,” he started to a dim grumbling from the assembled Choir members. Grelle didn’t know who that was and decided to check out for the most part from the conversation. Apparently this woman had been investigating instances of Great One inseminations, whatever that meant, and had disappeared without a trace earlier that Night. “What’s more, our intelligence suggests that the School of Mensis has secured a Celestial Larvae,” he concluded. Grelle perked up at that, they couldn’t be talking about the one she had given to Othello could they?

There was a muttering from the group. 

“Do you think we might be compromised?” said one. 

“There’s no other logical explanation,” said another, “There must be an infiltrator, amongst our ranks.” It suddenly got very hot in that room and Grelle loosened her collar.

“I came to the same conclusion, myself. That’s why I called you here, you’re all the most trustworthy and loyal members of the Choir. It’s my proposition that we send a small team to the Unseen Village to recover the Larvae, meanwhile the rest of us shall stay behind to assemble an inquisition. We’re going to execute these plans in silence. None of this leaves this room until the interloper has been routed.”

“I volunteer William and I to go to Yahar'gul!” Grelle nearly shouted in panic, certain her face was red as blood at that point. They all turned to face her, as though seeing her for the first time, silently interrogating her from behind their blindfolds. 

“Who are you again, brother?” asked the leader, after the silence seemed to go on for forever.

“I’m William’s girlfriend!” she squeaked.

“Ah, my apologies,” he said, clearly uncomfortable at having misgendered her, and thereby unwilling to investigate her any further. “Yes uh, William and his… girlfriend should go to the Unseen Village.”

“Are you sure, Grelle?” asked William quietly, turning to her. He seemed reticent to say that he was worried about her hunting prowess, but it was clear that was his. They hadn’t gone Hunting together since they had first met, and clearly he hadn’t gotten any reason to believe she was more competent since then. She wondered if he thought she had merely called herself a Hunter to impress him.

She didn’t want to confront the child, but she couldn’t stay here. The moment anyone actually began investigating her she was certain she’d be found out. Beside, she had been procrastinating confessing her secret to William, and part of her had wanted to believe she could keep up the façade forever. If she got him alone, out of the Orphanage, she’d certainly be able to explain herself, she was sure he’d listen.

“Yes, I’m sure about you William,” she said.

Instead of pondering her confession, her mind drifted to the Celestial Larvae that she had sired. She had shoved it out of her mind since the moment it left her field of view, but now that it was unequivocally her goal she was forced to confront it.

She regretted giving it up. She had the sense of self enough to admit that much. She had no idea what to do with it once she got it, probably just put it in the Nursery and pretend that it was the same as any other Larvae. That line of thinking was assuming she’d even been allowed in the Orphanage again after she confessed. It was also predicated on the assumption Othello hadn’t vivisected it or immersed it in acid or something. The thought of it coming to harm left her vaguely unsettled, but not as upset as she thought she should be. Maybe William was rubbing off on her.

They stood above the Unseen Village where she had talked with Othello earlier that Night. They stood there quietly making plans for how to proceed. She tried her best to not let on that she knew exactly where the Larvae was, but the last thing she wanted was to spend any longer in this place than she had to, and this was an opportunity to impress him with her Hunting skills. William kept looking back at her as she twirled her scissors in her right hand. She considered confessing to him then and there. But it would be best for the Larvae if she waited till afterwards, should the worse come to pass. At least then William would be able to take it back to the Orphanage after… killing her or whatever the worst case scenario she could imagine was.

Yahar'gul was locked down tightly, this late into the Night. The school of Mensis had some unique defenses, most striking was the way they utilized resonant bells to summon disposable blood homunculi. William commented on how efficient of a defense it was, and Grelle had to agree with him. They avoided patrols where they could but eventually were spotted on a terrace, still many stories above the ground.

Eager to prove herself, Grelle waded into the monsters, dodging out of the way of a hatchet and dashing in close to cut down its owner. She heard a shout and managed to pop another in the face before he could bring down his club, staggering him and finishing him off with a slash to his throat. 

William sprayed Rosmarinus mist to prevent the monsters from flanking her before engaging the telescope on his trick weapon to slash at the chest of a beast that managed to slip through behind Grelle. She cut down a few more, and William circled the periphery dispatching the beasts that tried getting in range of her flank.

One with a rifle took aim at Grelle as she sliced through his companions and William shouted for her to dodge. Thankfully, as in sync with him as she was, she managed to avoid the quicksilver bullet, and he was able to take out the sniper before he could threaten the life of his girlfriend again.

They worked well together. By the time they managed to dispatch the last of the beasts she was breathing heavily and she could feel the sweat beading on her forehead. She turned to give William a big grin and he gave her a small but genuine smile back before it fell and he pointed to the other end of the terrace. Through an open archway she saw the silhouette of a woman with a band of sleigh bells in each hand. She jingled them, and the pools of blood around them coelessed reforming bodies that rose from the depths ready to attack.

The hordes were just as tough the second time around, and the third. Grelle tried pressing through the swaths of Beasts to reach the bell ringer but was repelled time and time again, with a few glancing blows for her trouble.

Eventually she was cornered by the monsters, barely able to hold them off with her tiny trick weapons. In panic she began reaching under her robes where she had hooked her old saw, more than ready to give up her disguise here and now if it meant she’d be able to tear her way out of the swarming homunculi. Before she was able to, the beasts simultaneously staggered back and gripped at their heads. She looked up to see that William had plunged his trick weapon into the face of the bell ringer, who had slumped to the ground dead. He had used Grelle’s retreat as an opening to reach her. She couldn’t fault him for the tactics, it was the kind of cold efficiency she had expected from the man. She finished off the last of the weakened beasts before rendezvousing with William.

She was sweating profusely and panting; so was he. 

“How’d I do?” she asked between breaths. 

“Better,” he said, his small smile returning. As proud as she was it was still supremely difficult fighting with these scissors. 

They managed to get to the streets below without too much more hassle, and Grelle gave up trying to play dumb about the architecture of this place much to her boyfriend’s mounting consternation at her foreknowledge. She checked Othello’s laboratory and made sure it was empty of her friend before leading William into it. The Larvae was right there in a cage on the center of his desk. William looked nervously at all the books while Grelle rummaged around trying to find the key to the cage.

“Ah, here it is,” she exclaimed when she finally found it, before slipping the key into the lock and liberating the small mewling thing. She’d need to apologize to Othello later for taking it back, but with any luck he’d be disassociating so hard he’d forget he ever had it.

_ “It is the nature of all things that they must seek to reproduce,”  _ came the voice of the past William in her mind as she looked down into its familiar face. It was her child, her flesh and blood. Thankfully the creature didn’t seem cognizant that she was the reason it had been in that cage in the first place, cuddling up to her breast. She regretted leaving it here, definitely. No one can help being what they’re born as, she knew that better than anyone. 

The present William before her spoke up.

“Grelle, I have to ask you something, and I need you to be truthful with me,” he started, a certain uncharacteristic apprehension in his voice. This was it, the moment of truth. Grelle wasn’t ready, then again she knew it was time to come clean. Before he could continue there was the sound of jingling and footsteps coming down the hallway outside of the laboratory. “It’ll have to wait.”

Saved by the bell as it were.

They made their way back to the deserted streets of Yahar'gul, thankfully undiscovered, even if Grelle had a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach, other than the butterflies she already had, like they were being stalked. Once they were sure they were alone, William slowed down to a walk before turning to face her. She set the Larvae down on a nearby ledge and gave it a blood vial to play with before turning back to allow herself to be confronted by him.

“So, you had a question for me,” she started.

“I’ve just been thinking, Grelle.” He said rubbing, his shoulder and looking down at the ground, one again with an uncharacteristic apprehension.

There was a distressed squeak from behind her, and for the second time that Night Grelle was saved from having her head caved in with a Tonitrus by the noise from a Celestial Larvae. This time she spun around dodging out of the way as she slashed her trick weapon across the chest of her attacker. It was no use, her assailant was wearing a thick stiff woven tunic that rebuffed the attack. She dashed back next to William who put his hand on her shoulder to steady her.

Their conversation had been interrupted again, and Grelle was starting to get frustrated.

There were three Hunters standing across from them. All three wearing heavy metal helmets, reminiscent of a bygone age. Grelle dimly remembered Othello warning her to stay away from any Hunters like this that she encountered, but it seemed to be too late, and her and William were in for a fight, and an uneven one at that. As clumsy as she was with her scissors, she’d be next to useless with them against these men. The three of them whispered silently to each other.

One had a wooden shield and Tonitrus that he sparked in the air causing electricity to crackle. Another of them had a rifle spear, she wondered how that got here. She wondered if he had killed any of her Powder Keg friends to take it. The last had some nasty looking claw made out of bone and leather along with a pistol. It was three against two, or just one with Grelle rendered useless, and Grelle felt worse than useless.

William squeezed her shoulder and kept close to her as they paced around in a circle opposite the Yahar'gul Hunters. The trio fanned out and William backed them away, to keep them from surrounding them. As they were forced back down the road, William took the initiative to lay down a curtain of mist to their left to try and halt their approach so they might rotate out of becoming cornered. That prompted the one with the Tonitrus to run in quick, swinging a second blow at Grelle’s face. It really felt like these guys were trying to rile her up. She dashed in quickly and delivered another few useless slashes into his chest. William had slightly better luck with a swing that struck his shoulder and managed to produce a meager spray of blood before he turned the attack with his shield.

Grelle wasn’t able to use that to her advantage, as she heard the unmistakable noise of a rifle spear cocking behind her. She rolled out of the way as the cobbled streets before her exploded with the impact of a hail of pellets. The rifle spear was quick to reload and she spun around to see it pointed at her once again. She pulled back the hammer on her pistol and rolled to the side, ready to pop the Hunter in the chest. This archaic woven cable and metal armor might have an advantage against her physical attacks, but there was a reason they fell out of favor with the advent of gunpowder and quicksilver.

She rolled and he rolled matching her. She pulled the trigger and so did he. They both shot one another simultaneously. The impact of the pellets to her chest staggered her just as badly as her bullet did him, and they both stood there dumbfounded for a moment together. Both bleeding out of little holes in their respective chests.

She felt an incredible pain in her back as the third Hunter raked her with his nasty claws. It didn’t matter, even if she could match them blow for blow, two against one, she’d always lose. The cut was deep and jagged and hurt worse than it had any right to. In her pain she only just barely noticed the spear part of the rifle coming at her. She tried to block it with her scissors but they barely managed to stop it from piercing her heart, instead directing it into her shoulder. 

She tried to slash back at them, but with the abysmal range of the scissors they both easily avoided her attack, while still being able to press her with the spear. Trapped between the two Hunters, Grelle realized she had to get out of there or she’d die.

She made a desperate tactical retreat, rolling away with abandon. It helped her get out of the kill zone, but she still took a slash across her leg from the spear as a parting gift. 

She looked up and tried to get a bearing on her surroundings. She was face to face with a brick wall, and as she turned around she saw the two opposing hunters creeping up on her menacingly. Behind them she could see William going toe to toe with the Tonitrus Hunter, groaning with exertion. There was no help coming. And it seemed like William needed her just as bad as she needed him.

She didn’t have much of a choice. 

Grelle unhooked her saw and whipped it out yanking the pull cord with one swift motion. The noise of its engine sputtering to life was cacophonous and caused the two Hunters cornering her to startle and backstep. William and the Hunter he was fighting also paused to look at the noise.

Grelle ran at the one with the rifle spear at full pelt. He raised it to shoot her but she moved slightly to his offside out of the narrower spray she knew rifle spears had. She continued to use her intimate knowledge of the Powder Keg weapon to strike at the wooden weak point on the center of the spear when he held it up to block her attack, cutting it clean in half. And he soon followed suit.

The saw bit into the thick woven cable of his tunic and into flesh, muscle, and bone beneath it. 

She ripped her saw all the way through and his two halves fell to the ground before she turned to the claw Hunter. Her back still ached something terrible from where it had struck her. She moved in on him slower than she had his colleague, and he tenuously backed up, readying his pistol. She feigned right and he shot at empty air. She let him strike her again, wanting to neutralize him quickly so she could get to William. The cut was deep and hurt worse than the first, but it let her slice up his arm, shoot him in the head, and finish him off by slashing into the nape of his neck.

She quickly moved to the Tonitrus Hunter who himself dashed backwards when William layed down a cloud of mist. He held up his wooden shield and Grelle swung her saw against it, sending sawdust into the air as it quickly buried its way through to the other side and into his arm. A couple more cuts and he felt to the ground in bloody ribbons.

She looked around to see if there were any other assailants, but the streets were as quiet as ever. They got even quieter when she deactivated her saw, and she heard the rumbling echo from down the adjoining alleyways.

William picked up the Celestial Larvae protectively and stared at her through his blindfold. The Larvae squirmed and reached out towards her but he ignored it. She turned to face him and gave him a toothy smile.

“If a weapon ain't got kick, it just aint worth it,” she said in between exhausted pants. She walked to where she put the Larvae and grabbed the blood vial she had left with it. She injected it into her leg while William looked on with a scowl.

“So you are the infiltrator then?” he asked, voice icy but laced with a more than a tinge of hurt.

“Well yes I suppose, but I’m not on a mission of academic espionage for the School of Mensis.”

“But you brought them this Celestial Larvae.” It wasn’t a question.

“Well technically yes, but you don’t understand. There were some strange circumstances, just let me explain. You see… Ugh, I don’t really know how to put this-” she said before he interrupted her.

“You killed Ran-Mao, you’re wearing her robes.”

“Well, I’m not really sure who that is, but I did kill a woman for these, yes,” she answered, not wanting to lie to him any more. His mouth fell open at the bald faced admission. “Now-" she started before being interrupted again.

“Do- do-,” he stammered, looking for the right words, “Do you honestly think I’m going to trust anything you have to say, now?”

“I do love you William, whether or not you believe me, I think you should know that. That’s what this was all about you know? I’m a silly goofball with a distinct lack of self preservation instinct, and a penchant for audacity. I infiltrated the Choir just because I had a crush on you, isn’t that crazy?” she said before bursting out into laughter. It was such a ridiculous situation she found herself in.

William wasn’t laughing, in fact he was pretty clearly debating whether or not he should attack her. He probably was supposed to. She figured it was a good sign that he was hesitating.

“It was so fucking easy, William,” Grelle said when he turned to walk away without another word. “It was the easiest thing in the world, to walk right into those doors and be accepted as a member of the Choir. It was so easy... to feel like I belonged.” She took a deep breath before continuing. “I still want this William, I’m sure we can work it out.”

“Never talk to me again,” was all he said, without turning to face her, climbing into an elevator and pressing the switch before Grelle could follow him. He went up. Up and out of her life. Well, that could have gone better. Grelle wanted to die. Grelle didn’t feel much of anything else.

Deep down she always knew this was how things would end up. The part of her that lived in the real world. The part that she never brought with her into this dream realm, into this Night of the Hunt.

What did he mean to her? Redemption? A chance at a happy husband in a happy life? Something else entirely?

Did he really need to mean anything for her to still be sorrowful after losing him?

She felt empty and unable to process the moment. She had spent so long eschewing this moment’s possibility that she didn’t have the emotional capacity to understand it.

She was numb, and she wasn’t, and her wounds were partially healed by the vial but still needed treatment. She automatically felt her legs taking her to a place where she had once gone to seek comfort. Who knew? Maybe she’d find it there again despite all odds.

The door to Angelina’s clinic was torn off its hinges, and there were deep scratch marks along the doorframe. It seemed things just got more dire every time she visited. The panic that had set in when she found the place unlocked didn’t find her now. She calmly walked through the threshold and explored the dark clinic.

The parlor was empty, but the light in the laboratory was on and something was moving around. Grelle heard the sounds of arrhythmic panting and strained breathing. A breathing that didn’t sound fully human.


	6. Now I'm Waking Up, I'll Forget Everything

“H- Hello? Is someone there?” Her voice was guttural and otherworldly, but it was unmistakably hers. The rest of Angelina wasn’t very Angelina anymore, but it too was unmistakably her. Her limbs had elongated. She had partially disrobed and her entire body was covered in thick greasy red hair. Grelle didn’t know what caused this exactly, but she could make a few guesses.

Angelina didn’t seem to see Grelle when she walked into the laboratory. Her face was wrapped in heavy blood-soaked bandages, save for her mouth which was unable to close from the size of her teeth. Something must have happened to her eyes. 

“I- I can feel you… I can feel you here,” she muttered to herself.

Angelina paused for a moment. Grelle just stood there taking the sight of her friend in.

“Grelle? I smell… I think I know this scent. Grelle?” she called out sniffing the air and prowling around the lab, shoulders hunched, bumping into a surgery cart and knocking the instruments to the ground with a loud clatter.

“Yeah, it’s me, Angelina,” Grelle finally spoke up.

“Ah! Wonderful Grelle! Won- Wonderful, My sweet- My Grelle,” she said, aimlessly meandering around the room, not towards Grelle’s voice. Grelle’s heart broke at that. She seemed so genuine in her excitement to have her nearby. Even after their last encounter. Even in this state. Even knowing Grelle’s duties as a Hunter. Even knowing that one never recovered from lycanthropy. Even after all of that she was still happy to know Grelle was here. She sighed and Angelina spoke again. “How are you?” she asked, as though nothing were out of the ordinary.

“Well,” Grelle began, sitting down on the edge of the infusion table and preparing an IV for herself while Angelina continued to stumble into shelves sending glass jars full of reagents and specimens to shatter on the tile floor, “William and I got together.”

“Ah your Church paramour? Splendid!” Angelina said, grabbing a round bottom flask off the table and attempting to pour its contents into a beaker. Its contents would have spilled if it had any. Neither of the glasses contained anything, but Grelle didn’t have the heart to tell her. She was surprised that the Minister was as lucid as she was this far into her transformation. 

“Yeah, it was nice,” she said, sighing with relief when she finally got the IV flowing. She could already feel the soreness of the cuts fading away. It was nice, wasn’t it? “But I confessed my secret to him, and... it didn’t go over well.”

“Oh no!” called Angelina, more empathetic than she had been, certainly that Night, but potentially during the entire time she knew her. “That’s so- So… Grelle. Confession… Secret… He found out you’re a- A boy? I’m so so- Sorry,” she said, continuing to play with her lab equipment. She seemed to be having trouble with fine motor skills with her hands swollen, having formed mitt-like claws. Grelle didn’t correct her and tried her best to ignore the disrespect to her womanhood, knowing it was probably unintentional, not wanting to bear the incredibly sick woman any ill will in her present state. “Confession… Grelle! I- I too... I have a confession. I should tell you… while I- I think… I still can.” 

“Hm?” Grelle perked up, wondering what it could possibly be. She felt like she already viscerally experienced most of the woman’s secrets this Night, what more could there be? Angelina put down her toys and moved to walk back across the Laboratory, this time towards where Grelle sat. It was slow going and she tripped over more than a few things on the way.

“It’s my- My blood Grelle, I’ve been giving... you my own blood.”

“What?” Grelle didn’t understand what she meant.

“The cure I’ve been working on… It- It’s just for me. For you… The Treatment it’s- Oof! It’s so simple, Grelle. Any trickle of woman’s blood will do, Grelle. It’s easy to temper. It's… They don’t want to treat you, but I did. I would.”

“You mean you had me killing women for nothing?” Grelle asked, the warm feelings for this woman she had been having in this moment fading quickly.

“Not for nothing, Grelle. They deserved it… You know- You know that. And I needed the blood for my own experiments. For me… So I could have a baby…” she said, finally reaching the infusion table where Grelle sat. She let Angelina touch her with her swollen hairy hands. She started at her thighs, clearly searching to make contact with Grelle’s own hands. Grelle obliged and took her hands in her own. “So we could have a baby,” Angelina whispered, leaning into Grelle, laying her swollen bandaged head in her lap. “Bring life into the world. Bring joy. A- A bundle of joy.”

“Angelina…” Grelle started, not knowing what to say nor how to continue from here. She had too many emotions swimming around in her brain. She had such an intense contempt for the woman in that moment because of everything, but she also found that she loved her in spite of everything. Perhaps because of everything, as well.

“Grelle, my husband. I- I’ve been such a dutiful wife,” Angelina cooed, her voice cracking. Her skin was burning hot, she was feverish and flushed, covered in slick sweat and something else. “I’ve been so dutiful… please…”

Her jaw worked back and forth gnawing at thin air. Grelle kissed her on the forehead.

Her saw seemed too cruel a weapon for such a pitiable beast. And yet the scissors weren’t her. She would never use them again.

On her way out of the laboratory she paused, noticing the way some of Angelina’s clothes were neatly folded on a surgical cart. It would have been ironic if they were on the same cart that she had previously left the Choir garb, but Grelle was pretty sure it was a different one. She examined her red coat, it was a nice thick fabric. Blood Ministers wore coats to wick away blood just as Hunters did. She had a recent dalliance into the world of sewing and she figured it wouldn’t take too much modification to reinforce it into a proper Hunter’s overcoat. Seeing as her current clothes would need to be binned, it would be a shame to let it go to waste.

* * *

“...So I took her coat to spruce up my old boring black Hunter’s garb,” Grelle finished. She had recounted the story of her time in the Choir to Ronald and the old wheelchair bound hunter. Them, and the strange boy-doll that stared at her as though it was looking straight through her soul. The garden in front of the Workshop was peaceful and quiet, the calm ambience only broken by the old Hunter’s guffaws at her story. 

“Very funny story _girl!_ Very funny, indeed. I must thank you for coming to regale me with it and indulge an old man. You do not disappoint.” He wiped away at the tears in his eyes from beneath his long grey bangs. Ronald didn’t seem to think it was nearly as funny. 

“Shucks Grelle, sounds like you’ve been having a right terrible Hunt. Once tonight is over you want to go out with me and the boys for drinks?” he asked, arms behind his head, leaning back into a springy bush. Drinks always were his panacea, but damn if alcohol wasn’t an effective one. If only Yharnam had more drinking establishments, as it stood the only ones that existed did so primarily to serve out-of-towners. Yharnamites didn’t have much interest in any liquid beside blood. The only one she knew of that did liked tea, and she was gone now.

“What do you mean once it’s over, pretty boy?” admonished the old hunter, smile disappearing. “You’ve been in here working on your trick weapon all Night! This Nightmare can never end unless some Hunter slays it! Not that I think you’re up to the task, with how soft your hands are.” His smile and tiny incessant giggles returned. “Look, even this _young woman’s_ hands are far more calloused and tough than yours! Look!” 

“I mean, it’s just, well, my trick weapon’s been giving me trouble is all,” Ronald said, rubbing the back of his neck self consciously. “I still have a few tweaks I think I need to make.”

“I’ve got a good replacement for you if you want them,” Grelle added, pulling out the twin pairs of scissors and holding them between her thumb and forefinger. She and the old man shared a laugh at that, but Ronald bristled at the thought of being stuck with the tiny blades.

“On second thought, I think it might be about time to debut my recently renovated mower,” he said, getting up from his seat on the low stone wall and heading up to the Workshop to retrieve his aforementioned trick weapon. Halfway up the stone steps he paused and turned, “What do you say, Grelle, wanna go actually do our jobs for once?”

“Speak for yourself, I’ve been busting my back all night,” she said giggling and playfully acquiescing by way of rising to follow after him. Part of her was dead inside and would probably never come back to life. Still, it felt good to be back with her friends. Well, friend. This old man was the furthest from a friend she had, and the doll still didn’t talk to her. But she’d reconnect with the other Powder Kegs when she got the chance. She was starting to feel better already.

“Do remember to leave a pretty corpse you two!” the old man called after them, Grelle just replied by limply tossing the scissors at him which he caught with surprisingly quick reflexes.

* * *

They started in Central Yharnam, as one is wont to do. Even though it would certainly take more than a little doing to suss out just where the Nightmare resided tonight. As she’d previously observed, most of the Hunting Parties had already cleared these streets and the few stragglers that crawled out of the woodwork served as a good trial run for Ronald.

Even after all that time in the Workshop she still had to give him a few pointers and walk him through multiple field repairs. He would always give a bashful smile and blush when she leaned in close to grease monkey her way through another engine stall. Maybe he had a thing for her. He did invite her out to drinks after all. He was pretty cute, then again he did feel more like her kid brother than anything. He really brought out her maternal side in a way that she only ever experienced in the Orphanage’s nursery. 

It was a little too early for a rebound anyway.

They decided to head into the woods towards Hemwick Charnel Lane, thinking it might make a good lead. The moon was hanging low in the sky and the usually dank forest was actually fairly bright and serene despite the way it was filled with bestial riflemen and their hounds. She could fight even better now that she had her spectacles back on and her sight wasn’t blocked with a blindfold, plus she found Angelina’s coat actually served as a very effective piece of armor.

As they faced heavier opposition her thoughts drifted to just the opposite of fighting. She remembered how William had pegged her as a wetnurse and how accurate he was. She was unexpectedly good at being a mother and being one made her happy. Was that her true calling? Could it ever be again now that she was excommunicated as it were? She was good at mothering but she was good at fighting too. So what was the truth? What was she meant to be? Maybe violence and love weren’t mutually exclusive virtues.

As she pondered that line of thinking she was slow in noticing a tripwire that had been laid across the forest floor leading into the small hamlet. Ronald dashed out of the way but she didn’t and was hit squarely in the everything by a massive log that swung down from the canopy. 

Her body was flung many dozens of meters only to bounce and roll down a steep cliffside, eventually crashing through some branches and landing face down on a particularly large pile of fallen leaves, twigs, and other duff. Her whole body ached but she was pretty sure she hadn’t broken anything and was probably pretty lucky to land where she did. She wiped off her spectacles and tried to get her bearings. She was near the shore of the lake. She looked up the cliff face through the hole in the canopy she made to see Ronald’s face peering down at her over the edge.

“I’m okay!” she called up to him.

“Grelle, are you okay?” he called back, before processing what she had said, “Oh good!”

“I’m going to wrap around the cliff. I’ll meet you at the Hemwick Crossing!”

“Alright!” he said before disappearing back over the edge.

It was actually fairly peaceful down here, although the footing was more than a little rocky. There wasn’t much threat beyond the odd murder of carrion crows. She turned off her saw, flung it over her shoulder, and stuck her pistol into its holster. She continued along the shore for what felt like an hour before she managed to find a suitable path back up the cliff.

She deftly hopped up a pile of boulders and eventually pulled herself up and over the edge of an abandoned domicile that was built flush with the cliffside. Her feet pattered along the cheap clay tiles of the roof as she made her way to the Crossing, and when she rounded a corner she heard gunshots, lots of gunshots. 

She slid down a small hill and saw the empty clearing where two long cobbled streets intersected. In the middle of it were three hunters, all unfamiliar. One was unmistakably a Vileblood, kitted out in red flamboyant knight’s attire. She was curvy with a messy bob of red hair that reminded Grelle of her own. And Angelina’s. In one hand she held a long ornate pistol and in the other a rapier that Grelle thought might be an authentic Reiterpallasch. She was running circles around the other two Hunters, rapidly firing quicksilver bullets out of both weapons.

The other two were wearing matching heavy grey garb and had approximately the same lanky body type. One was a woman with icy white hair who held a threaded cane and repeating pistol. She was pretty sure the other was a man, although his face was obscured by a conical golden helm which when combined with the a large wooden wheel he hefted over his shoulder made quite the queer sight.

The fight didn’t last very long. The Vileblood eventually got sick of making potshots with her guns and moved in to try and skewer the woman on the end of her blade. The woman effortlessly dodged, transforming her cane into a serrated whip that dug into the Vileblood’s leg. It caused her to stumble into range of the man who spun his wheel, splitting it into two and creating a thin arcane crimson mist about it, before hitting her in the center of mass. Her body was torn apart by the weapon in a way that didn’t really make logical sense to Grelle.

The woman knelt by the Vileblood’s body and prayed over it, but Grelle couldn’t hear exactly what it was from where she was standing. Grelle suddenly got the inclination to vacate the premises before remembering the way back was a dead end. It was a moot point anyway since the man noticed her, tapping the woman on the shoulder and pointing in her direction.

Grelle didn’t rev her saw just yet, hoping against hope that they might not intend to kill her. You never know when a pair of Executioners just want to say hi. Nevertheless, Grelle loosened her pistol in its holster.

“We shall purge your impurity!” shouted the woman in a shrill voice, slamming her cane into the ground to reassemble it out of its whip form and walking towards her with the man in tow.

“Oh, ha!” Grelle laughed nervously, hoping she might shmooze her way out of this, “You must have me mistaken for someone else. You see, I’m not a Vileblood. It’s just the red coat and hair, definitely an easy mistake to make.”

“Oh no, Grelle,” came the voice of the man, muffled slightly by his solid golden helmet. His voice was calm and steady. She got chills down her spine at the sound of her name. “We’ve been watching you. Kidnapping women, stealing the blood of innocents, crossdressing.” He said the last indictment with a particular disgust. “You disappeared from our view for a time there, I had given up hope that we might get the chance to purify you this evening. How strange, then, that we should meet here.”

“Proof of the divine plan!” shouted the woman who picked up her pace and began running at Grelle.

“Now, let’s not be too hasty!” Grelle shouted back, unholstering her pistol and firing a warning shot at the woman’s feet.

“Unclean!” she screamed, undeterred in the slightest. She swung at Grelle with wild abandon and gave Grelle a clean second shot to her abdomen. She stumbled but managed to shrug it off, swinging at Grelle again and grazing her arm before she was able to deflect the attack with her saw.

“I don’t even know you! How could you be so obsessed with someone you don’t even know?!” Grelle shouted over the sound of her saw grinding against the firm metal cane. She suddenly realized the irony of her words. She could have pressed the clash further but she was worried about getting in range of that wheel, she didn’t have the faintest idea of what it was capable of and it frightened her.

Instead, Grelle hopped back towards the hill she had slid down on her way here. Her only hope was to stay out of range and hold out until Ronald could come and assist. Although he, by all lines of logic, should have gotten here before her, a thought which didn’t comfort Grelle in the slightest.

She danced around them best she could. Occasionally the woman would fire her repeater pistol, and occasionally she would hit Grelle. She must have had an especially weak bloodtinge since the quicksilver bullets left painful welts instead of piercing her skin. She kept snarling about impurity and corruption, only getting more and more consumed with anger and hatred as Grelle dodged her attacks.

Through it all the man plodded towards her, always holding the implicit threat of the massive wheel over her head should she slip up. Grelle wondered why he didn’t rush in and grimly theorized that he was trying to savor this moment. According to him they’d been stalking her for several Nights now, a thought which scared her more than anything else.

Grelle must have been back-stepping for at least ten minutes. Her calves ached and she was starting to get winded. It looked like the woman was far from drained and had only continued to come at her with greater fervor. Grelle had to either take her chances pressing an attack, fighting them directly two on one, or testing just how much longer she could hold out, hoping help would eventually come. If she took the latter and help never came, she wouldn't stand a chance. She chose the former and hoped she didn’t choose poorly.

She revved her trick weapon and feigned one last retreat, before swinging it into the woman’s space. It worked, and the blade managed to bite into the woman’s thigh. Her heavy clothes got caught in the whirling blades and the engine strained. Grelle engaged the clutch to stop it from tearing itself apart and yanked her saw off of the woman, disentangling it from her garb.

She bled from her leg but continued coming at her like nothing had changed. Screaming, she swung her cane at Grelle’s face. Grelle barely managed to dodge out of the way before a second and third swing came at her lightning fast. Grelle was too exhausted to get out of the way of the fourth which took her in her own thigh. She stumbled and shot her pistol into the woman to try and slow her advance. The woman rolled out of the way of the bullet and fired back with a twin shot from her own. One hit Grelle square in the chest, while the other grazed her shoulder. She staggered before desperately swinging her saw at the woman who blocked with her cane. Grelle pressed the clash as hard as she could, slowly overpowering the woman. When Grelle looked in her face her snarl was gone and had been replaced by a small smile.

She had been so caught up in her duel with the woman that she forgot about the man until it was too late. She’d only heard the noise of the man spinning the wheel once before, but the noise was still etched into her mind. Still, the attack was slow and she managed to avoid the first of the blows. She swung her saw in low only for it to get caught up in his cloak. This time she wasn’t quick enough to engage the clutch. There was the ungodly noise of metal machinery grinding against itself, so loud that it hurt Grelle’s ears, and her trick weapon began smoking. And Grelle thought she had the authority to lecture Ronald on proper engineering technique.

The wheel took her squarely in the face. The pain went deeper than just her corporeal form, it felt like something about it was pulling her soul straight out her un-lacerated veins. The impact sent her flying across the cobble streets to land against an old dead stump.

She tried to pick her body up but she wasn’t fast enough. The woman stomped on her arm before she could raise her pistol, firing uselessly into the dirt. Without a moment’s hesitation the woman raised the tip of her cane and plunged it deep into Grelle’s stomach.

And then again.

Before she could a third time the woman was struck in the chest by something that came from behind Grelle. A thin silvery mist formed and Grelle couldn’t see her attackers any longer. Someone grabbed her from behind, picked her up, and reached around to stab something directly into her heart. She looked down and saw an empty blood vial clatter to the ground. She was stabbed again in the heart, a second vial emptied into her quickly. She felt light headed from the sudden intense infusion. It too clattered to the ground to be replaced by a third, gripped by a firm masculine hand covered in a black leather glove.

She rolled her head back and breathed in William’s aftershave. He pushed her off of him. Delirious, she reached for her trick weapon before remembering it was broken and on the other side of the road.

“Grelle, here!” her savior shouted, tossing her a copy of his telescoping trick weapon. She caught it in slow motion. Her perception of time for the ensuing fight skipped around as hopped up on blood as she was. Later she’d piece together that she ran to the right, popping out from behind the mist to the startled and confused Executioners. Next she engaged the telescope of the weapon and slashed the woman across the chest, to a spray of blood that glimmered magically in the moonlight. In response the woman transformed her cane into its serrated whip form and swung it, wrapping it around the shaft of her weapon to keep Grelle from being able to swing it again.

Grelle used that to her advantage, disengaging the telescope dragging the woman towards her. The movement drew her into range of Grelle’s pistol and she shot her cleanly in the face. The woman fell backwards, disentangling herself from Grelle’s trick weapon. The man ran towards her, but William slashed at his back, causing him to stumble and look over his shoulder. Grelle slashed at his front, and as he tried to turn her blow William slashed him from behind again. He fell to the ground, Grelle and William cutting him down from either side. 

She quickly came down from her high and suddenly all the pain from her wounds rushed back into her. She bent over to spit up more than a little bit of blood onto the road. She was alive, but she’d need proper treatment soon or she wouldn’t be for much longer.

She wandered over to the stump she had previously smashed into and sat back down on the ground, leaning up against it to catch her breath. She heard William’s shoes clicking against the cobblestone, and he sat down on the stump behind her. She heard him fiddling with something and then felt a sudden sharp pain in her neck. Whatever it was he wanted to do with her body, she’d let him, she didn’t really care, it didn’t hurt any worse than any of her other injuries. Her hand limply went to the pain in her neck and felt a rubbery tube poking into her.

It was an IV. She turned her head to look up at him. The other end of the tube was coming out of his arm.

“Ah,” she said, “Okay… Thank you.” He didn’t reply at first.

“So you’re not a member of the School of Mensis and you’re not a Vileblood,” he said after a while. “Just what are you, Grelle?”

“I thought you wouldn’t believe anything I told you. I thought you never wanted me to talk to you ever again,” Grelle said, despite the strain that talking was putting on her injured body.

“Don’t pull that shit after I just saved your life, I’m still very mad at you. Or did you forget what you did?” His voice was contemptuous and colder than she’d ever heard from him, which was saying a lot.

“Sooorry,” she said, holding the vowel far too long.

“I changed my mind… About that, I mean,” he said, voice losing a certain amount of iciness, but not a whole lot. “I do think I’d at least like to hear you out… It’s the only proper course for a scholar.”

“To answer your question, then. I am exactly what I appear to be,” she said before spitting up more blood down her front. The effort of talking was not getting any easier. 

“And that is?”

“A Hunter, a Powder Keg, a silly woman in over her head. I wasn’t lying, I really did sneak into the Choir just so I could meet you. This town drives us all a little crazy.”

“Really?” he asked, any warmth that might have crept in all but leaving his voice, “What exactly about me drove you so crazy?”

“At first it was more just an impulsive whim, or some kind of histrionic mania. I never really liked being myself all that much so the risks of being caught and killed didn’t seem so harsh to me. I thought you were handsome, better relationships have been founded on less.”

“Pft.” William scoffed harshly. “Was it worth it? Risking life and limb. Killing a woman for her clothes. Deceiving me, and everyone. Was all of that worth meeting a man you didn’t even know? Worth…” he trailed off, voice softening with a sigh, “Me? Did you find me to your liking once you got to know me.”

“I suppose,” was the only reply that she had. He just let out a harsh bark of a laugh. His laughter was a rare delicacy, but this wasn’t exactly how she wanted to hear it. There was a silence. “Why did you come save me?”

“Because I like you too.”

“Why?” 

“I…” he started, clearly unprepared to answer that question. Even now she set him off balance. “You’re not the only one who’s a little crazy, Grelle.” There was another silence and she waited for him to continue. “I have trouble expressing myself... Sometimes I can’t feel things the right way, the way that normal people feel things.” He adjusted his blindfold nervously. “I’m always… disconnected with people, and that leads to me saying or doing things that hurts them or makes them hate me. Makes them think I hate them. People call me cold and aloof, and I think that's just what they say when they’re being nice.

“But you’re different, Grelle. You have this overwhelming unconditional interest in me. And I don’t know where that comes from. Even after all this, I don’t think I really know you, that’s certainly true. And you don’t know me. We don’t know each other at all.”

“Does love require understanding?” Grelle asked with a long sigh. “I don’t know if anyone really knows anyone. We all live in our own little worlds, in our own minds. We’re always just trying to make contact, to prove we’re not alone in our own dream reality. I saw you over there and I saw that you were another person living in a whole different world from me and I wanted to touch that. That’s why I did it. Because I wanted to see if I could. You, whatever you were, felt so far away. I wanted to see if I could reach you.”

“Here we stand, feet planted in the earth,” William muttered to himself, “But might the Cosmos be very near us, only just above our heads?” She wasn’t quite sure but she thought he might have sounded amused. Amused, and something else.

“But what you said, that’s not exactly true, William,” Grelle continued. I think you know me better than you think. I think you see parts of me that I could never see in myself. That blindfold offers a surprising amount of insight. I mean, I never thought I could be a mom until you saw that in me. You saw that my body wasn’t just meant to kill, that I could nurture.”

“Not meant to kill? What about Ran-Mao?”

“I mean, she attacked me first, but then again I was trespassing, but then again… Listen, it’s kind of a long story. I can better explain all the technical details if you’ll give me some more time to recover. Talking like this has taken a lot out of me.”

“Fine,” he said, a little bit of warmth returning to his voice. There was another moment of silence between them.

“Hey, since you saved me, does this mean we’re back together?” 

“Not so fast, Grelle. I’m going to wait and see just how satisfying your explanations for everything is. And even then, I think we’ll need to start from the beginning. Maybe if we start there we can try to know each other again. Properly this time.”

“If I am satisfactory, can I see the Nursery again?” She had one Larvae in mind that she wanted to see specifically. Thinking about it made her tear up. The child she and Angelina had unwittingly made. The only child either of them would ever make.

“We’ll see,” he said, unconsciously reaching his hand down to run his thumb along her jawline. It was covered in a firm black leather, but the hand beneath it was tender, if masculine. She leaned into his touch. 

“We’ll see,” she repeated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so very much everyone for reading, especially everyone who doesn't know anything about Bloodborne and let me drag you along through another dark Victorian setting.
> 
> This fic has been particularly tricky for me to write for a multitude of reasons, but I'm satisfied with how it turned out. If you're craving more, I'd feel remiss if I didn't plug my other works. I write plenty of Grelliam, and I've also written another Grelle-centric videogame crossover [specifically for Doom (2016)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25065496/chapters/60711940), it has much more of a humorous tone but it's one of my favorite things I've ever written so 🔌🔌🔌.


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